HUNDREDS of people formed a human ring around a North-East landmark as the region marked the Make Poverty History campaign's Global White Band Day yesterday.

On the eve of the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, more than 500 people of all ages encircled Penshaw Monument, near Sunderland, to show their support for the massive campaign to alleviate Third World poverty.

Respect Party leader George Galloway, who won many admirers for the way he answered US Senators who claimed he had received Iraqi oil, joined North-East MPs Chris Mullin (Sunderland South), Fraser Kemp (Houghton and Washington and Sharon Hodgson (Gateshead East and Washington West) at the event.

Aerial photographs were taken from a plane that flew over the monument.

Campaigners hope that G8 leaders who meet at Gleneagles, Scotland, next week will take action to ease the burden of Third World debt and make the rules of trade fairer, particularly for African countries.

But Mr Galloway said: "In my view the leaders gathering at the G8 in Gleneagles are not the solution, they are the problem.

"The system over which they preside, of war and privatisation and exploitation, is the reason for the poverty in the world. It is our view that we won't make poverty history until we make the G8 history."

But Mrs Hodgson said: "I don't agree that the developed world is to blame for the situation that the under-developed is in.

"G8 leaders will be looking responsibly next week at how they can tackle this issue."