Thousands of anti-G8 protesters have marched through Belfast city centre to register their opposition to a system “which puts profit before people and always will: a system for the few and not for the many”

Party members from throughout Northern Ireland marched with banners, flags and placards.

On Friday, Party members also delivered a letter of protest to the US Consulate highlighting the United States human rights record ahead of Barack Obama’s visit. The letter focused on Obama’s failure to close Guantanamo Bay prison camp and interrogation centre, the unjust and continuing imprisonment of the ‘Cuban Five’ and the murders of civilians by the United States in unmanned drone attacks in countries it is not even at war with.

And why does the Workers Party and so many thousands of people in Northern Ireland oppose the G8 summit?

Here’s just five reasons:

• The G8 represents the interests of most of the worlds largest capitalist economies. Their philosophy is based on privilege, profit, inequality, disadvantage, hunger, poverty and war.

• The governments of the G8 countries  have designed and delivered an austerity agenda which has allowed the rich to get richer at the expense of working people, public services and jobs.

• Since 2008 £13 trillion of public money has been used to bail out the global banking system. The amount of money that was spent on banks could have ended world hunger for fifty years .

• The G8 countries spend more on weapons than any other country, bar China. The USA and Russia devote 17% and 14% of overall spending on weapons of war. This is more than on health or education and it is still rising.

•  Over 900 million people in the world are malnourished. Despite a commitment to  contribute a mere $20 billion to alleviate this starvation -  only $5 billion  was delivered.
•