Mass Lobby speaker quotes

Thom Yorke (rock band Radiohead) "If you have countries on their knees, then really the only way to get them back is to have a level playing field, to use the right corporate term. And I think that is really not happening at the moment. Things are to set up to exploit to put it mildly and that really needs to be sorted now. The West can't talk about free trade and do the opposite."

Dr Vandana Shiva (Indian environmental campaigner)"I come with the very deep respect, love and solidarity of my one billion people. The problem of injust trade is when they make everything tradeable: life is tradeable, water is tradeable, food is tradeable. There are no rights anymore. The one thing that people live on the margins need is to protect their rights."

Martin Curtis (Head of Policy, Christian Aid) "What poor countries need is unfair trade. We need the WTO to be promoting sustainable development. That means giving them the freedom to set their own trade policy. They may have to use subsidies where we might have to cut ours."

Anita Roddick (former CEO of Bodyshop) "Today is brilliant, there are loads of disparate groups of people ranging from students, the clergy to the Women's Institute. The only way we can challenge multinationals is by us taking them on like this. I travelled for seven months of the year and trade rules are killing off farmers in the developing world. A Nicaraguan woman I met said she just wants to move from slavery into poverty, only a few are benefiting from these unjust trade rules."

Julian Filochowski (Director of CAFOD and veteran campaigner) "We are here to demonstrate our compassion. Compassion for the 1.2 billion people around the planet who live on less than one dollar a day. Compassion for the people who tonight, like everynight will go to bed tonight hungry. We are here to demand justice…. Simple trade justice"

Thom Yorke "A bunch of lunatic economic zealots waving stupid little flags with Free Trade written on it roaming the earth demanding the right to extort and exploit the poorest and weakest, demanding to buy the water and sell it back to them undrinkable and unaffordable, demanding to flood them with cheap imports, telling them they can maybe join our club if they do what we tell them but only if they are prepared to watch their children dying and keep taking strong medicine and charge them extra if they wanna try selling us anything... That's what this is about as far as I am concerned."

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Photo credits: Ivan Coleman/TJM, Anne-Marie Coppock