The latest meeting of the Convention of the Left took place in Manchester at the weekend, within yards of the barricades around the Labour Party conference. The Convention's first meeting was in 2008, also in Manchester. Its purpose was, and is, to unite all factions on the Left. I have not attended any of the previous conferences but they do not seem to have achieved much more than enable Left activists to talk to each other (or make speeches at each other) for a number of hours without anybody falling out over sectarian differences. But this latest conference had a more focussed theme. Faced with a government that has declared its intention to make cuts in public services and the welfare state that will destroy the living standards of the working class, the only topic was: how do we stop this?