TRAIN and coach loads of people from South Bucks helped form a six-mile human protest chain against Third World debt.>

Campaigners join human chain to cut world debt

Picture shows demonstrators at High Wycombe station taking their message to world leaders

TRAIN and coach loads of people from South Bucks helped form a six-mile human protest chain against Third World debt.

Rae Gillott joined a coach that took church members from Amersham to Birmingham on Saturday, where leaders of the world's richest nations were meeting for the G8 Summit.

He said: "We felt we had to go and join in the protest at the G8 Summit, asking leaders to cancel Third World debt by the millennium.

"I was in Kenya in 1970 and again in 1995. I was shocked at the difference and at the horrendous level of poverty there now.

"The protest in Birmingham was a very happy atmosphere, but very thoughtful, and we talked to lots of people who had come from many different areas to join in."

Willie Reid, of Holmer Green, a founder member of Jubilee 2000, which is organising the campaign, said: "I was very encouraged by how it went, with 50,000 people coming.

"I was responsible for getting the one-and-a-half-million signature petition to the cathedral to present to Clare Short.

"We packed it in 49 boxes, representing the 49 countries which had joined in the petition.

"It was disappointing that the G8 Summit leaders had left Birmingham before the chain was formed but it clearly made an impact as the Prime Minister came back in the evening and summoned Jubilee 2000's director to speak to him.

"Now we have to keep the momentum going and hope and pray that come the millennium, common sense will prevail and the crippling burden of debt will be lifted.

"The UK Government is keener on debt cancellation than the rest of the G8 but you can only go at the pace of the slowest.

"At the moment the people are ahead of the politicians. There is no reason why the UK Government can't act unilaterally on Third World debt. After all, we were the first to abolish slavery in 1833."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.