18.11.2009 At their St Andrews meeting on the 7th November the finance ministers of the most powerful twenty countries in the world - the G20 - were challenged with a demand for action on the key issues of jobs, justice and climate. A peaceful demonstration was held in the morning on the nearby beach before a people's summit in the afternoon where a range of inspiring speakers and activists were heard on a variety of subjects. Some progress was even made by the meeting itself, particularly when Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling committed to a transaction tax that would greatly advance regulation of international financial speculation - the source of the global financial crisis that has lead to the poorest nations fighting for scraps of capital. This commitment is of even greater importance in the light of the IMF's managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, expressing a lukewarm interest in such controls over the flow of capital.

The demonstrations and summit were a fantastic success, being both well received and peaceful. They allowed a whole range of civil society organisations to passionately express their views and be heard internationally, raising the profile of issues that deserve to be better heard by the public as well as world finance ministers.

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