Ten years ago I linked arms with 70,000 others in a human chain around centre of Birmingham and the conference centre in which the G8 leaders were meeting. We made so much noise (literally too) that the Prime Ministers adjourned their meeting to come out and listen, and that event put debt relief decisively on the world agenda.

Ten years later, a rather smaller number of us made the 'Journey to Justice' back to Birmingham. Our actions in May 1998 had set the ball rolling, but as yet it has only gone one fifth of the way, and 80% of debts remain. All governments, including our own, have been guilty of making many promises that they have not kept on debt relief and aid.

Over those last ten years there has also been a growing recognition that much aid, including that which incurred much of the debt was in fact not aid at all, but its reverse. This unjust aid was often used to support of corrupt regimes (and bolster the overseas bank accounts of ruling elites through bribes) at the same time deliviering most of the 'aid' as subsidies to companies in the donor countries who were providing projects at best irrelevant to the problems of the countries receiving them, and often worsening the conditions and expectations of the majority population, and environmentally disastrous.

Over the history of colonisation and continued post-colonial exploitation of physical resources and people, the real debt - in moral, social, economic and ecological terms - is owed by the wealthy nations to the majority world. We used their labour to dig up their minerals, set up plantations to grow our crops on their lands, imported their people as cheap labour and continue to cream off many of their most talented peple to work for us. Put simply, we built and continue to have the wealth we enjoy on their backs.

More about the event and more pictures on My London Diary at  http://mylondondiary.co.uk/#justice