IT started quietly enough, as a handful of farmers mounted a token blockade of an oil refinery in Cheshire over the high cost of fuel.

However, within days it had snowballed beyond their wildest expectations, with blockades at fuel depots nationwide, including the Shell refinery at Jarrow, Tyneside, provoking mass panic-buying.

Even as petrol stations started running out of fuel, the protest still seemed to be riding on a wave of popular support, while fraying nerves within the Government put the Army on standby.

Ministers publicly insisted that the protestors would not dictate Government policy, but did agree to meet their representatives, and, a week after the mass blockade began, the fuel lorries started to move again.

Andrew Spence, one of the leaders of the People's Fuel Lobby in the North-East, said there was no doubt that the protests made a difference.

"If we had not done what we did, we would now be looking at £5 a gallon instead of £4," he said.

"We made the price of fuel an election issue and we certainly achieved more than we thought we would. When we started there was half a dozen of us. We didn't think we would nearly bring a Government down and bring the country to a standstill."

Mr Spence, a farmer and haulier, from Consett in County Durham, who later led a convoy from Jarrow to London, said the protest had succeeded in forcing the Government to abolish the fuel escalator, which increased tax on petrol every year.

"We knew how the cost of fuel was affecting our businesses, but we didn't realise how it was affecting the general public and how much support we would get," he said.

As well as abolishing the escalator, Chancellor Gordon Brown also cut duty on ultra- low sulphur petrol by 2p and diesel by 3p.

And, in a concession to hauliers, the excise duty on lorries was reformed, producing an average reduction of £715 a year on each vehicle.

According to the Petrol Retailers Association, the average cost of a litre of unleaded petrol is now 74.9p, and for diesel it is 75.9p. A year ago, both stood at 79.9p.

But the last 12 months have also seen a fall in the price of crude oil, from 30 dollars a barrel to 25 dollars.

Malcolm Dodds, Northern area manager of the Road Haulage Association, said the cut in duty was swallowed up by the petrol companies, and hauliers were still suffering from high fuel prices.

"The protests have not made any difference at all in the price of diesel, but it has highlighted the concerns of the industry and it is something the Government is trying to address," he said.

"The problem is a lot of hauliers are going out of business now, and the rest are barely breaking even. We need a reduction in the cost of fuel now.