Chancellor Gordon Brown's speech at Jubilee 2000's 'The World Will Never Be The Same Again' event, Westminster, 2 December 2000

"Janet, Ed ^[1] and friends, we gather in the Emmanuel Centre today, not just from all over Britain but from all over the world, inspired first of all by the idealism and the tireless strength of our churches and a million campaigners. Driven forward by the calls of justice and the urgent cries of the excluded. Humbled by the faith and prayers of those who have sustained us on our way, and today I believe, more determined than ever to discharge our duty to those who have least. Not just to commemorate what has been done in this Jubilee year, but to affirm that our work is not yet done. Indeed, we have only just begun and the work will go on until we achieve our aims - in the words of Isaiah - 'to undo the heavy burdens and to let the oppressed go free.'

So today, let me start by thanking this unique coalition for justice. A coalition that, let us recall, started as just the protest of a few, but a coalition founded on a simple and straight forward conviction: that the burden of unpayable debt on the poorest in this world is morally wrong. A coalition for justice that has grown as that human chain - which encircled first Birmingham, then Cologne, then Okinawa - to become a movement that is now far greater than its numbers. A coalition of which the history books when they are written will say: 'they achieved more standing together for the needs of the poor in one year, than all the isolated acts of individual governments could have achieved in one hundred years.'

This coalition for justice now with this worldwide reach, has become itself living proof that we are not as individuals powerless, but together we have power. A network of mutuality has bound together all of us: citizens and nations, rich and poor in one moral universe strong enough to change the world. This is because the memorial that you seek is not in the chapters of these history books, it is not in monuments of stone, it is not in praise from the powers that be - least of all in politicians. This is because the memorial you seek, is the transformation in the fortunes of the poorest and richest of the earth, men and women who may never know us, but whose lives can be better as a result of our actions.

We are assembled here today not just to celebrate achievements, but to re-dedicate ourselves to what together we have yet to do, and to send the message that we want to reverberate across the roof of the world: that what drives us forward, what inspires us to further action is not the cancellation just of billions of debt (where before Jubilee there was hardly any debt cancelled), not just the 20 countries now to receive debt relief by the end of the year (when once it was only one), not just the 200 million men and women who will be assisted because of your actions (when once it was only a few). What drives us forward are not the achievements we can point to - important as they are - but the gains that are still to be made, the potential to be realised, the promises unfulfilled, the future yet to be born, the world we can and must become, the causes that are yet un-won.

Our cause is every one of the 30,000 young children fighting each day for life, and today losing that fight because of diseases that we know are preventable. Our cause knows that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, to everyone of the 200 million men and women in avoidable poverty. People whose lives today are lived at the bare edge of survival, where hunger is so great that a handful of food is often the highest help. Our cause- for as long as some are poor, our whole society is impoverished- is to transform the shamefully blighted existence of one billion of the world's poor (almost a quarter of mankind today), unnecessarily trapped in grinding poverty as a consequence of their country's weakness, and debt.

Now did we not say to each other last year: We cannot build that new Jerusalem on a mountain of debt? Did we not also say to each other: We can with faith and action move hitherto an immovable mountain of debt? And can we not say now in the words of the old testament with faith, and with action: We are now carving out of that bleak mountain of despair a new foundation, a solid rock of hope?

All year in the treasury, I have received letters and I have received cards and messages: 300,000 in all. Letters sometimes from unexpected places, like the day an embarrassed treasury civil servant came to me clasping a particular postcard asking me how I would like to respond to a Christian Aid card sent to me by my mother. My mother said on it 'don't waste any stamp replying to me, prudence has a long history in our family, put that into debt relief as well'.

So let us first renew our pledge that we will not rest from our efforts and not retreat from our work until we have achieved what we are all here to achieve: that is, to make deeper, wider and faster debt relief, the essential and unbreakable foundation of a new virtuous circle of debt reduction, poverty reduction and sustainable development. I say to you when the need is so great, and the need is so urgent, that it is time to ensure that the richest countries who have so much, should not receive from now, any further benefits from the debts of these countries who have so little.

So I can say to you, and to all 41 of the HIIPC countries, and on behalf of the British Government that Claire Short and I will, from today, and in the spirit if Jubilee 2000, renounce our right to receive any benefit from these historic debts owed by the 41 countries. And I say to the first 20 countries: 100% debt relief means that all the money from debt relief can for 200 million of the world's poorest people, now go to poverty relief this year. And I say to those countries where there is conflict, those countries where there are civil wars, those countries without agreed poverty reduction programmes at decision point at the moment - countries of 140 million of the poorest people in the world, owing Britain £1billion in historic debt: from today, all the debt payments owed to us will be held in trust for poverty relief in your own country, paid when poverty reductions plan are agreed.

Today, also from here in London, I am asking all our fellow governments, who too want debt relief to lead to poverty relief, that they too renounce their right to any benefit to the historic debt owed by 41 countries. I hope Jubilee 2000 will work with us so that all countries will do likewise.

Never again therefore, will Britain benefit from income from debts, and from now all debt payments will be put, as you want, at the service of poverty relief. But we must do more. We know, as Ed said: the end of the year is not the end of our work. We know also that the most successful Jubilee events in history, were never one-off events, they were acts of compassion. So my second plea, is that we go out and build together, a new alliance of governments and civil society that makes a reality of the virtuous circle following debt relief and sustainable development.

If you were to come with me on the travels I have been on, if you were to see the things I and so many others have seen - young children in Asia, their lives lived out above open sewers, but their eyes bright and full of expectation; young men reaching for the new political freedom to bring economic freedom from unemployment. If you could see what a Christian Aid worker told me she had seen all too often: a young African mother, using all her energy, desperately fighting to save the life of her young son, and in doing so, losing hers. If you have seen this you will know, it is a tragedy multiplied a thousand times everyday, and you will agree with the second commitment made here today.

Here from Britain, we must now do everything we can to realise in the years to 2015 the aims for children. That instead of children dying before the age of 5, that is one in seven of the world's children born, they live long lives. That avoidable infant deaths are avoided, and we meet our health target to cut infant mortality by two-thirds. Instead of 120 million young children denied education, we must meet our education target: every child in the world should have the chance of education. Instead of the needless suffering, we must meet also our target to reduce poverty by 2015. To achieve this our government plans, starting in January - leading to the UN special session on children - to seek to build a world wide alliance on poverty. All of us - the UN, the international financial institutions, UNDP, UNICEF, the developed countries, the developing countries, all of us bound together to discharge what is a shared responsibility that we owe: that the lives of the poor, the uneducated and the sick shall no longer be without comfort, and that we shall also take on, and tackle prejudice, discrimination and racism throughout the world.

But because we can only advance if we advance together, my plea today is that civil society, churches, NGOs, individuals everywhere, from January 2001, both hold us accountable to these objectives, and participate in meeting them. That we show - as Jubilee 2000 has shown - how one small victory in one small place can be followed by a bigger victory in many places, and then an even bigger victory beyond it. How one limited success amongst one group of people can inspire more successes amongst more people, so that in the decade to come, we will see across the world - in community after community, country after country, eventually across whole continents - acts of compassion flooding forward to become like a wave of economic transformation, social renewal and humanitarian triumph.

And so, the candles that you lit in the darkness of St Paul's Cathedral in 1999, whose glow reached conscience after conscience throughout our country, and then radiating across from our country to continents right across the world, sent out a light more powerful than even our eyes could follow, enlightening every part of the world. Beacons of care and hope, that in this Jubilee year, have shown right across the world; and these lights, these flames radiating outwards again with even greater power, can cut through the darkness of shame and injustice and debt, and emblazon across the world your message of faith in the future.

It is faith in the future, because if you've seen what I have seen and others have seen: people who have nothing, but yet people who feel their obligations to each other, you will agree there are millions who can feel, however distantly, the pain of those in need, and can be moved to action. It is faith in the future because there are millions like you, who see wrong and right it, who seek suffering and try to triumph over it, who see injustice and seek to overcome it. With that faith in the future, I believe that ours can be the generation that builds that virtuous circle, where debt reduction is followed by poverty reduction and by sustainable development. Ours can become the generation that realises not only the ancient text of Isaiah that the oppressed go free, but ours can become the generation that meets Tom Payne's challenge, that rings right across the centuries: that we can together 'make this world anew'. That is our task, the challenge to all of us working together. That in the future, can be our achievement."

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Footnotes

^[1] Janet Bush, former economics editor of The Times, chair of the meeting; and Ed Mayo, Chair of Juiblee 2000 Coalition, the opening speaker.