Newcastle University

Mr Chancellor, or should I say more accurately, Mr Chancellor for life! On behalf of all the recipients of Honorary Degrees, let me say what a privilege it is to be here today to play a part in such a great and historic ceremony, and to receive this much valued award from a great University in a great region, making a huge contribution not just to the economy and society of this country but of the world.

It's a privilege for us to receive awards in this region from where, in 1807, thousands of people campaigned to achieve one of the unique changes brought about in Britain at that time – the abolition of the slave trade, which we commemorate this year. In the 1930s, thousands supported the march from here to campaign for another form of social justice, an end to unemployment, and where in 2005 – I know from my own experience – that so many thousands of people took part in the Make Poverty History Campaign. Let me join you in applauding David Golding's superb leadership, not just in Newcastle and the North East, but throughout the whole country.

And it's a privilege also to receive this great award from a University that has as its Chancellor perhaps the first modern Minister for International Development: someone who led the way for so many to follow. I want to praise the contribution of Chris Patten to the work of international development over the decade.

This is a great University and I praise also the Vice-Chancellor and all of the staff because it is not only engaged in such groundbreaking research like stem cell science, but it is a popular teaching University for thousands. Having been a university lecturer myself, I know that, to me, this award is all the more welcome because universities stand for integrity, impartiality, objectivity, the pursuit of truth, the disinterested search for knowledge – all the qualities you have to leave behind when you go into politics!

This ceremony is also very special today because it is a celebration of the contribution of some of the individuals I admire most in the world – and, I know from your applause, that you admire most. Let me thank President Mkapa who brought millions of young children into education by making education for the first time free of charge for primary school pupils in Tanzania.

I was present with President Mkapa in Dallas when he even managed to persuade the actress Sharon Stone to raise a million dollars in a few minutes to help deal with malaria. Let me also praise him for his leadership in health care in Tanzania right to the point at which he retired when he pledged that he would do everything in his power to remove the scourge of HIV Aids from Africa.

Let me praise Susan George also. She campaigned on the debt issue before there was any campaign on debt, and she exposed the fact that you could not conceive of a New Jerusalem built on mountains of debt. It was because of her pioneering work that debt relief became such an issue in the years leading to Gleneagles.

And what can you say about Bob Geldof? He is my mentor - and he is my tormentor! It was Bob Geldof who said: 'If Live Aid in 1985 was about charity for the poor, Live 8 in 2005 was about justice for the poor' - and it was Bob Geldof who said: 'Who is to blame? All of us are to blame and we must do more!' So for your leadership right across the world, Bob, I think everybody in this audience pays you a huge debt of gratitude.

In thanking David Golding, we are also thanking everybody in this audience today; everybody who joined Make Poverty History, everybody that attended the great rally in Edinburgh, those that attended local demonstrations and signed local petitions as well - and the hundreds who organised, the thousand who petitioned, the hundreds of thousands who marched; because what did Make Poverty History prove? It proved that we are not self-interested individuals alone with no obligations to each other, sufficient unto ourselves. Call it the driving power of social conscience, call it the moral sense, call it the lightened man, call it the better ages of our nature. Call it just so we see ourselves as members of a community bound together by common needs, shared values, mutual responsibilities and linked destinies right across the world.

I'm reminded of a story that was told of Olof Palme, who was a Social Democratic Prime Minister of Sweden. He toured the world putting the case against global poverty and in the early 1980s, he went to meet Ronald Reagan. Before Olof Palme arrived, Ronald Reagan turned to his advisers and said:

'Isn't this man a Communist?'

And his advisers said: 'No Mr President, he's an anti-Communist'.

And Ronald Reagan said: 'I don't care what kind of Communist he is'.

Olof Palme was asked by Ronald Reagan: 'Is your aim in life to abolish the rich?' And he said: 'No, my aim in life is to abolish the poor. I want everybody in this world to have the chance to realise their potential'.

The Make Poverty History campaign has created the strength of shared purpose among the hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands who said that poverty can be eradicated. First, they said that poverty should be eradicated; then they said poverty must be eradicated and then they shouted from the heights in words that reverberated across the roof of the world that the whole world must now work together so that poverty is eradicated.

Due to popular pressure, 20 countries now receive debt relief worth more than a hundred billion. The commitment for the first time to 0.7 per cent is a target for overseas aid, for not just one but nearly 20 countries around the world. We have a pledge that by 2010 all Aids sufferers will have help and a commitment to 50 billions more in development aid for education and health. Just as Make Poverty History has these achievements behind it, we must now create a stronger movement for change so that we can have universal health care, education for every child, the eradication of poverty, the empowerment of the poor and a Fair Trade deal that is just to the poorest countries of the world.

When the great Indian leader Ghandi was asked what his advice was, he said: 'If you are ever in any doubt about what you as an individual should do in any given situation, think of the weakest, the poorest, the frailest person that you have ever met. Think of their sufferings and their needs'. And he said: 'Then you will never be in any doubt about what to do'.

There are still a hundred million children who do not go to school. Eleven million children who die each year from avoidable diseases. Seventy million have been afflicted by HIV Aids. A billion go without fresh drinking water. For too many millions of people, poverty is not history and that's why, in the spirit of Make Poverty History, we are determined in this year and beyond to launch our campaign for education for every child in the world because we believe that with all countries coming together . We have contributed eight and a half billion pounds already and we have it in our power in this generation, indeed, to be the generation that saw, for the first time, every child in every country of the world going by right to school free of charge.

And just think, too, we could be the first generation to eradicate some of the most dreaded diseases – tuberculosis, malaria, polio, diphtheria, pneumococcis and then, hopefully, Aids. That is why, having created in the last few months, an immunisation facility where four billion dollars will be invested so that 500 million children will be vaccinated, and 10 million lives will be saved, we are now going to go on this year to create what is called the Advance Market Mechanism, whereby we will underpin from the richest countries the development of new drugs and treatments for the poorest countries, so that people can have drugs not at high prices that are unaffordable but at low prices that allows drugs to be within the reach of ordinary people who need them.

This is the vision of the future –not what we can do for Africa but what Africa, empowered, can do for itself. I went with a number of school children only a few months ago to Mozambique to meet President Mandela to launch these new campaigns for the coming year. I went with Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary. As I was coming up and introducing him to Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela said to Hilary:

'How's Tony?'

And Hilary said: 'He's 84 you know, he's just had his birthday'.

And Mandela went backwards – it's the first time that Tony Blair and Tony Benn had been confused with each other!

But what Mandela said to us, as he came out of retirement, and then said he was going back into retirement, was that he had climbed one mountain which was the conquest of apartheid, but there was still another mountain to climb: the conquest of poverty and injustice.

When people say to us that to secure Fair Trade, to give education to every child, to abolish some of the worst diseases, that we are just talking about impossible dreams and naive hopes, let us remind them that the same cynics once said: 'The abolition of slavery was an impossible task'. They said: 'The end of child labour was an unrealistic pipe dream'. They said: 'Universal free education in our country and universal health care was a naive hope'.

When people are cynical enough to dismiss us as impossible idealists, no more than naive dreamers, when they misquote the Bible to tell us the poor will always be with us, let us not just remind them of the work of centuries, the end of slavery, of child labour - or in our own country the creation of free health and free education. Let us remind them that when the world works together, as we did to secure the end of apartheid more than 15 years ago, that there is nothing that we cannot do.

If President Mandela is telling us, at the age of 87, not to falter, not to rest but to speed up what he called 'the long walk to justice', let us, in the words of Isaiah in the Bible, find new life in our strength and indeed mount up, like wings as eagles.

I say to this great audience today, at this historic ceremony that we will remember for years to come: 'Have confidence and have faith. Hold fast to the belief that it can and will be said of our generation that we built a movement on ethical foundations that had the vision, had the courage and had the moral strength and the greatness to do the right thing; that we will continue to work unflinchingly and unfailingly to build justice in our time and indeed to Make Poverty History'.

Thank you very much.