The Clause IV debate is rarely referred to now, but it was bitter at the time.  I was firmly entrenched on one side then, others firmly entrenched on the other.  Looking back on it, I think there were very few of us on either side who were really talking about the content of Clause IV and what it really meant (I was one of those few, as it happens) - for most it was a symbolic debate, about who controlled the party and how much had changed with the new leader.

It is fascinating to read how Alistair Campbell didn't care a jot about Clause IV, thought it a non-issue, but from a PR perspective liked the boldness of repeating Gaitskell's attempt to reform the constitution, and winning.  I don't think Blair cared a lot about the content either.  I remember a meeting in York where a friend of mine asked Blair directly if it were only Clause IV part 4 that was being changed, or the whole Clause (that included much on the role of the trade unions, etc.).  Blair replied that they were only getting rid of 'the nationalisation bit'.  He was wrong, they were ditching the whole clause.  Did Blair know that and lie to a party activist?  Did he not know what he was changing?  Did he care?

Yet this thing he hadn't really read, and never gave any hint of having understood was something which, eventually, he was happy to stake his leadership on.  Campbell's diary reveals that Blair asked Campbell to let it be known that he would resign if the party voted to retain Clause IV, and also that we would lose the next election.

In reality this was an extraordinary absurdity: if Blair had not raised the issue itself, it is unlikely a soul would have mentioned Clause IV.  It was always a constitutional clause, never a manifesto commitment; the idea that an election had ever been won or lost - or ever would be - over Sydney and Beatrice Webb's little bit of vague, inclusive, co-operative poetry is absurd.

Yet it is the last resort for all leaders when they fear they may lose a vote in which they have invested something.  For the right this was a PR thing - like dropping the Red Flag and painting the podia pistachio - yet the PR blunder of raising this thing and LOSING was such that Blair felt the need to effectively make it a confidence issue.

Can parties really exercise internal democracy when leaders have this option?  I don't think even Arthur Scargill (who left the party over Clause IV) was hoping that the Clause IV debate could topple Blair; it was never an issue to do with the leadership for those of us did the rounds of meetings arguing to keep it.  But they keep doing it, and it works.  Major did it over Europe; Blair did it again over Iraq; how long will we have to wait till Brown does it?  It's my way or I go!

Whatever people think about Clause IV now - and I suspect there are very few people other than me who think about it at all (I still refer to the new one as the new one - it's been 14 years!) - it raises a key question about how a party can be democratic without appearing either divided or disloyal.  A huge responsibility for that lies with a leader (a leader has to be able to happily accept the prospect of defeat) and also with the media (who leaders use very cleverly to promote the idea that not getting their way will be catastrophic to the party image).

If Blair really didn't know about the various parts of Clause IV, back in York all those years ago, somebody did - it was part 4 of the new clause that referred to the dynamic market economy; a subtle little up yours to generations of labourites who proudly bore Clause IV part 4 on their membership cards.