Liberal Democrat party fixers narrowly averted a grassroots revolt against GM products on Monday.

On a day when Brighton delegates swallowed tough new words on crime, the Liberal Democrat faithful came close to tying the party's hands on GM crop trials.

Westminster MPs took to the conference floor to avert a defeat on the "rural futures" policy paper.

Heavy hitters John Thurso, Evan Harris and Lembit Opik intervened to block support for proposals that would have committed the Lib Dems to halting GM field trials.

The renowned "beard and sandals" vegetarian environmentalist wing of the party came within eight votes of securing support for a "moratorium to be applied to field trials until such a time as research can prove that no cross contamination of organic or non-GM crops will occur".

A position that - if ever government policy - would effectively ban GM experimentation and leave the UK at odds with the European Union.

A series of high profile appeals from the floor saw a close call at 187 votes to 195 for the Lib Dems' current "precautionary principle" approach to GM - calling for a moratorium on commercial release but not the actual trials themselves.

Senior party figures were concerned that the hard-line green ban on trials would see the party branded as "luddites" standing in the way of the research needed to decide on the future of biotechnology.