|TOP|Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MP, has praised Christians for their campaigning efforts to end debt and increase aid but warned that their work will take a ‘lifetime’, reports Ekklesia.

Mr Brown said that campaigning by Christians had brought results that no-one could have foreseen but said that campaigning for global justice had to be even more powerful than in 2005, and even more powerful in 2007, in order to bring about real steps towards change from leaders on debt relief and aid made at the G8 summit earlier this year.

Speaking at a rally on international development hosted by the catholic aid agency CAFOD in Manchester, Mr Brown said: “The cause that we represent requires more than a week’s work at Gleneagles, more than a year’s campaigning right up and down the country. It is a lifetime crusade for justice.

“And all too often the promises that are made about world poverty are downgraded from pledge to possibility to just words and that is why people become disillusioned,” he said.

|QUOTE|Mr Brown’s speech to the 1,500 strong audience was in response to the challenges put forward by CAFOD’s head of campaigns, Alison Marshall, in her opening speech.

Ms. Marshall told the Chancellor: “”I believe you too, Chancellor, are an idealist. People like you enter politics because they too want to change things for the better.”

She continued: “But yet the commitment must still be honoured, the promises have yet to be delivered, the policy changes turned into practice.

|AD|“So much remains to be done, perhaps you also feel a bit disappointed by progress so far?,” she said, before calling on campaigners to push for trade justice to become a reality at the WTO talks in December.

Mr Brown responded: “The greatest movements in history, that really change history for the better, are movements born on the strongest of ethical foundations – movements built as CAFOD is on the rock of social justices, founded not on pessimism about the future but on hope of what we can achieve; campaigns built on compassion not on envy.”

Commenting on the WTO talks in Hong Kong in December, the Chancellor said: “If we are to make poverty history then we need to make agricultural protectionism history, and we must tackle the injustices of the world trade system.”

He added: “There is only four weeks to go until the trade talks in Hong Kong. And we must address these trade rules that not only prevent poor people from throwing off the shackles of poverty but shackle poor communities still further.

“And we must put an end to what the poor countries rightly say is the hypocrisy of our protectionism. And we must not let this opportunity pass us by.”