The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and the Chancellor, Mr Gordon Brown, suffered an embarrassing defeat last night after the platform failed to prevent debate on a motion demanding the restoration of the link between pensions and earnings. The motion was carried by over 60 per cent of the delegates voting.
Even as the ballot papers were counted, ministers launched a damage limitation exercise, having calculated that the inevitable bad headlines would have been even worse had they been forced into a last-minute compromise.
On the conference fringe, meanwhile, the debate about policing reform in Northern Ireland raged on, with SDLP and Sinn Fein spokesmen again warning the British government that failure to implement fully the Patten Commission proposals could seriously damage the Belfast Agreement.
After Mr Blair's successful conference speech, and his assertion that the government had "got the message" over pensions, ministers battled behind the scenes throughout the day to persuade trade union leaders not to force a showdown.
In scenes reminiscent of Labour conferences of yesteryear, Mr Brown was locked in talks with Mr Rodney Bickerstaff, leader of the Unison union, for 2 1/2 hours. The Prime Minister himself joined the backstage negotiations and publicly appealed to the unions to back off.
But after hearing the Social Security Secretary, Mr Alistair Darling, put the government's case, Mr Bickerstaff forced his amendment demanding further measures for pensioners including linkage, "for example, to average earnings or inflation, whichever is the greater".
Opening a short debate - during which one angry delegate told Mr Darling he himself would be a pensioner one day - an emotional Mr Bickerstaff told conference this was not a question of "a return to Old Labour" but of basic rights. To loud applause he insisted: "This resolution could be supported by the platform. They could be magnanimous."
And delegates gave a standing ovation to Baroness Barbara Castle, long-time pensioners' champion, who declared "this country can afford it", and stressed that, if the link was restored, pensions would rise only if earnings did.
Having failed to prevent the debate, the platform pre-empted it, issuing a statement by the ruling national executive committee saying the motion, if carried, would be remitted back to the party's policy forum. This would effectively push the issue offstage until after the Chancellor's expected across-the-board pension increase in November.
Elsewhere in Brighton, SDLP, Sinn Fein and Ulster Unionist delegations continued their lobbying, amid a growing sense of crisis about the political process in Northern Ireland.
At a fringe debate hosted by the Police Federation of Northern Ireland, and sponsored by The Irish Times, SDLP Assembly Member Mr Alex Attwood said "getting policing right" could prove "the salvation" of the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble.
Rejecting a suggestion by the federation's spokesman, Mr Les Rodgers, that Northern Ireland's political parties were not yet ready to be involved in managing the police service, Mr Attwood said "the prize" of nationalist and republican endorsement of a new policing dispensation was "just months away".P}