Stem cells: When the Beast of Bolsover snookered Enoch Powell

MPs patted themselves on the back over the mechanisms which delivered this week's battle on abortion and embryo research. Few of them now remember Dennis Skinner's single-handed victory against Enoch Powell's attempt to shut down stem cell research completely.

It was back in 1985 when Powell, who had long since broken with the Conservative party, was Ulster Unionist MP for Down South - and a champion of many lost causes, many of them unapologetically reactionary. "Romantic, but wrong," as they wrote of the Cavaliers in 1066 and All That.

Powell had a backbench private member's bill which, with his usual skill, he had steered through its committee stage, back to the floor of the Commons. With enough support on a Friday morning - 100 MPs needed to keep the debate going - he planned to carry his bill through the weekend if necessary.

The way Skinner later told it, he was alerted by fellow-leftwingers, Jo Richardson and Ian Mikardo. What can we do, Dennis? In those days enterprising backbenchers who knew the rules and had the nerve could do a lot.

Skinner noticed that a byelection was due to be moved that morning for the vacant Tory-held Welsh seat at Brecon and Radnor.

He checked the rulebook - Erskine May - and found that any MP could move the writ. So he moved it. Why? Because an MP who had the floor in those days could keep talking. And talking. The Labour boss class - though in opposition to the Thatcher government of the day - were furious.

What was he playing at? Preventing Powell getting his bill debated, that was what.

Fellow-troublemakers rallied round and Skinner talked and talked - with helpful and wordy interventions from old lags like Michael Foot - for several hours. He pulled his motion just in time to allow the byelection to go ahead (the Liberals won). As a result Powell's bill was snookered. It allowed stem cell research to proceed, as it has done ever since.

Powell, who shared Skinner's instinct for troublemaking and for asserting backbench power over governments, later told him: "Only you could have done that." Several years later the MP for Bolsover pulled the same stunt with a byelection writ to block one of Ann Widdecombe's attempts to trim the 1967 Abortion Act.

Could an MP do it again? No. Most such devices available to maverick backbenchers have since been hacked away in the name of modernisation of procedure. The Tory government did it first via the so-called Jopling report. Expecting to be in power soon, Labour acquiesced.

Blair and Brown have since "modernised" still further, sometimes in the name of "family-friendly'' hours - a phrase promoted by that family-friendly leader of the Commons, Robin Cook.

But another change has taken place. In the Big Brother era of inter-active participation, voters are less indulgent of arcane procedures they don't understand.

When I wrote about Gordon Brown's venture into YouTube interactivity the other day I noticed Leeds university expert, Professor Stephen Coleman's warning that IT is not enough: process in politics must be both transparent and understood.