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| FURTHER INFORMATION This page is where you will find all the latest information on the Edinburgh event - Get details of the Live 8 gigs here For specifics on the G8 conference itself go to For more on UNISON's contribution to the Make Poverty History campaign, go to
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As the leaders of the world's richest countries gather in Scotland for the G8 Summit, join tens of thousands of others in Edinburgh on 2 July demanding trade justice, debt cancellation, and more and better aid for the world's poorest countries.
Make Poverty History - join the rally on 2 July
In a few weeks many people around the world will be flocking to five huge free rock concerts to help raise awareness of the problems affecting people in the world's poorest countries.
It's going to be a brilliant day for music fans - but campaigners would like you to just set the video instead.
Why? The publicity generated very effectively around the Live 8 concerts is- not deliberately of course - partly obscuring the fact that the main anti-global poverty activity is a major march and rally in Edinburgh on 2nd July by the Make Poverty History coalition.
The Live 8 concerts echo the original Live Aid happening of 20 years ago, triggered by the terrible suffering caused by the Ethiopian famine. .
This time the impetus comes from a special campaign of which UNISON is a leading player - the Make Poverty History movement, which aims to achieve trade justice, drop the debt, and get more and better aid for the Third World.
Make Poverty History is an umbrella organisation of charities, campaign groups, faith communities and many others, of which UNISON is the main union presence along with the TUC.
The statistics are even worse than 20 years ago. Over a billion people don't have access to fresh water, 6,400 people die per day in Africa from AIDS, 100 million children won't get the chance to go to school this week and 30,000 children will die from diseases that kill next to none of their richer First World cousins - today.
There are five special Live 8 concerts being held on Saturday, 2 July. There is a big Hyde Park one, featuring Coldplay, Keane, Sir Elton John, US, REM and Pink Floyd, as well as sister events at Philadelphia in the US, Paris, Berlin and Rome.
All the concerts come four days before the official start of the 2005 G8 event itself, which this year is taking place at the Gleneagles hotel and conference centre, 65 kilometres (40 miles) from Edinburgh.
The concerts have attracted fantastic interest, with a record-breaking two million text messages received to enter the special lottery for 150,000 Hyde Park tickets.
And there's been tremendous media buzz around one of the major Live 8 organisers Sir Bob Geldof's call for a "million" people to flock to Edinburgh and join in the Long Walk To Justice.
Live 8 is calling for as many people as possible to make their physical presence and support for economic justice for Africa known to the leaders of the world's richest countries, the G8, which includes the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and Russia.
As Geldof said at the official Live 8 launch, "The G8 leaders have it within their powers to alter history. They will only have the will to do so if millions of people show then enough is enough. Numbers make things political."
Fantastic as the Long Walk To Justice could be, it's important to know that it's a separate event from the main focus of the Make Poverty History campaign, on the Saturday before, July 2nd.
For a start, Making Poverty History organisers have been negotiating for months with the authorities in Edinburgh.
This means there won't be any of the same accommodation, safety or crowd control issues on 2 July that some fear could affect the Long Walk To Justice gathering four days later.
UNISON members are encouraged to join the 2 July event, which starts at 11am and which culminates in all participants joining to form a huge human white band (the main Make Poverty History symbol is a white wristband) by mid afternoon.
Speaking at the rally will be a range of international figures and celebrity supporters.
There's an all-day festival at The Meadows with campaign and fair trade stalls, activities for children, food and drink, live music, speakers and surprise big name guests. You are welcome to stay until the event officially ends at 7.30pm but there's a 'big moment' to pull it all together at 3pm.
It's crucial that as many people as possible participate in the 2 July event in order to raise the Make Poverty History agenda as high as possible before the Gleneagles event, which is why UNISON is urging members to come along.
Last time the G8 conference was held in the UK, in 1998, some 50,000 protesters travelled to Birmingham to pressure G8 leaders to cut debt for the world's poorest nations, forming a seven-mile human chain around the city centre. Just imagine how much more impact that could make with many times that number of people taking part!
And the pressure must be kept up. While there's been great progress made in advance of the G8 summit, there's still an awfully long way to go.
The current pre-G8 summit plan to reduce debt for 18 poor countries by $1.5 billion annually, for instance, has been welcomed by UNISON head Dave Prentis - cautiously. As he adds, "There is still more to do. The big job for the Chancellor is to now persuade the G8 to cancel debt for the rest of the world's poor countries, to double aid and to deliver trade justice.
"We also need to be sure that the money to cover the debt cancellation does not come out of existing aid budgets, but is genuinely new money."
Make Poverty History has already racked up some significant successes in its first six months, including sending a million emails to Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Now help make sure that 2 July gets remembered for a lot more than great music - we want to make the Edinburgh rally just as much part of world consciousness. Much more than that, we want to Make Poverty History.
Story by Gary Flood
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