Conference hostilities mount as Blair faces grassroots rebellion on five fronts

Tony Blair is facing a grassroots Labour rebellion against five policy issues at the party's annual conference next month.

A spate of hostile motions is being submitted by constituency parties demanding that the Government abandons plans to give the private sector a bigger role in running public services and to part-privatise the London Underground.

Other resolutions call for the renationalisation of Railtrack and an end to the system of giving vouchers instead of cash to asylum-seekers, and express strong opposition to President George Bush's proposed missile defence system.

Labour officials fear it will be Mr Blair's most difficult party gathering since he became Labour leader in 1994.

Union officials claimed on Tuesday that the opposition inside the party to Mr Blair's plans for greater private-sector involvement in health and education was even stronger than last year's anger over the 75p-a-week rise in the basic state pension. The leadership's defeat on pensions at last year's conference helped to force ministers to concede a big increase in the basic state pension this April.

A resolution being tabled by several local parties urges the Government to abandon "its increasing reliance on private investment" and to rely instead on progressive taxation and higher borrowing.

Several local parties in London are tabling resolutions attacking the plans for the Underground public-private partnership. They include Holborn and St Pancras, the constituency of Frank Dobson, Labour's candidate in the London mayoral election and a former cabinet minister, who is appealing to local members not to press the motion.

Union and grassroots anger over the Government's policy on asylum-seekers was fuelled yesterday by speculation that a Home Office review will reject demands for the voucher scheme to be scrapped.

Ministers are nervous that a damaging public rift at the conference about the so-called Son of Star Wars project could harm relations with the Bush administration.

They may appeal to union bosses not to press for a debate in Brighton, in return for promising them a full-scale discussion on public services.

Union leaders believe the tone of the debate on public- private partnerships will be shaped by Mr Blair's keynote speech to the TUC conference in two weeks, when the issue will also appear at the top of the agenda. John Edmonds, general secretary of the GMB union, said: "For many people in the Labour Party this is the defining issue. We did not win the general election campaign in order to see a Labour government privatising public services. There is no doubt this is an issue where the grass roots of the party is more in tune with the public mood than the party leadership."

Yesterday a Downing Street spokesman said: "We are not seeking confrontation. We are absolutely determined to deliver the improvement of public services right across the board. This is something which both the electorate as a whole and public service employees want."