It popped up in all the obituaries; how Denis Healey saw off Tony Benn for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party in 1981.

There just wasn't much room for the back story: how the Benn candidature had caused mass panic in the hearts of the party managers; how even the well manicured finger nails of the then Scottish party secretary, one Helen Liddell, were in danger of being bitten into submission.

Now, there was a proper conference: fear and loathing, back and front stabbing, and, most gloriously for the reporters with empty column inches to fill, real uncertainty as to the outcome. They don't hold them like that any more. This weekend's gathering of the Scottish Labour Party faithful in Perth concert hall will be as overtly douce as the town it visits.

Speeches will be calibrated to press those buttons declared hot by the amalgamated union of focus group analysts and coincide with the demands of news deadlines. All the blood from pre-conference "discussions" over devo max or min if there's a No vote in September will have been carefully wiped from the walls. Such is the modern way with all political parties; an attempt to ensure the world is presented with a united front. Yet the more political parties paper over their internal cracks and the more they go for bland over bloodstained, the less interested their audience becomes.

Check out the archives on famous conferences speeches and it's not John Major fretting about the onward march of motorway cones or Iain Duncan Smith turning up the volume long after the listeners had switched off his set. It's Maggie with all guns blazing and a scriptwriter feeding her killer soundbites.

It's Neil Kinnock prompting a walkout in Bournemouth when he slags off Liverpool's tendency to militancy; it's even John Prescott making an impassioned speech to save John Smith's "one member one vote" bacon in 1992 despite the fact nobody ever worked out what he actually said. Ardour trumps grammar every time.

The SNP can still manage a public spat from time to time. Nothing as dramatic as turfing out Alex Salmond and the '79 group for stepping leftwards of the party line in 1982, though the more recent debate over changing Nato policy provided some much longed-for drama in the modern world of Mogadon conferences.

Not content dispensing with anything as dangerous as proper debate, contemporary gatherings have even managed to stifle anticipation by virtue of leaking anything which might qualifying as interesting in advance. 24/7 news cycles are deemed rather more important than mere delegates, representatives or voters.

Thus did we know Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson was planning to reverse the policy on free prescriptions long before she popped up to confirm it. And what percentage of its own tax Labour will generously allow a Scottish government to raise and spend has been well trailed in advance of Johann Lamont's podium appearance.

How much does all of this matter? Well, quite a lot if you still harbour an old- fashioned belief in transparency and honesty being the hallmarks of genuine democracy. Amongst the blizzard of statistics swirling around the independence debate has been the extraordinary fact that, while party politics strive in vain to re-kindle a respectable level of interest in their affairs, almost unnoticed, the town hall hustings has come roaring back into fashion.

Up and down the land folks are traipsing out on rain-sodden nights in their hundreds to listen to speakers, argue the toss with them, put them on the spot and do all the things you might once have hoped to do at a conference before tight scripting and choreography outlawed spontaneity.

Tomorrow night I'll be off to speak at the Comrie conversations, set up "by local people for local people, this is not about Yes or No but to discuss what kind of future we want for Scotland", the briefing note advised me.

Apparently they originally planned just four politician-free meetings in 2013. But, such has been the enthusiasm, they're scheduled to go right on up to September and beyond. It's surely healthy. It's grass- roots democracy in action. It is the very antithesis of pre-packaged, plastic party conferences.