Pete Burnett, one of the marchers on the North East leg, explained to the public meeting in Middlesbrough some of the ways in which social exclusion affects people's lives in Britain and across Europe today.
Across Europe there are 20 million out of work, 50 million are living in poverty. We've seen the reemergence of poverty on a mass scale. That's what this march is about.
For every job that's lost a new job is created but these are jobs without rights. We have part time jobs, jobs empty of any content. They're jobs where people can be expelled can be made unemployed with no notice at all.
good example is banking: 15000 jobs have been lost in the last five years. 19000 jobs are going to be lost between now and the end of the century.
But jobs in banking have actually increased - they're part time jobs - they're zero hour jobs - they'rejobs which specify a certain number of hours a month where you can be called at an hour's notice to do these things so the person that phones you about your overdraft or your account - usually a woman - is on performance related pay - she's got to get money in or else she losses her job.
More and more jobs in the civil service have become jobs of this nature where they have to achieve certain results.
They're on six monthly contracts and their contracts will end unless they achieve these results their not re-employed. this is a new world of labour -it's very different from the world of our fathers and grandfathers of our mothers and grandmothers. So amongst the people most sorely affected by these developments are women because most of the new developments in the labour market affect women's jobs - the most insecure short term jobs, after hours, usually sold on the grounds that they are suitable for busy women with children -shelving in supermarkets and so And of course women are the first ones that suffer from cuts in benefits.
Across Europe immigrant workers - since 1985 we've had the Schengen agreement which basically was an outline plan for immigration policy to keep out immigrants from Europe. Its real intent and its real effect has been to cast a shadow over the lives of immigrants in Europe.
One in every seven workers in Europe is a migrant, from Morocco, from Mali, from North Africa, from various parts of Asia, from Surinam and various parts of Latin America.
Some of them have got papers - some of them think they've got papers but haven't got adequate papers, some of them have no papers at all - some of them had papers that have been confiscated by unscrupulous employers.
Racism and immigration laws cast a shadow across the lives of these millions of workers when they cant actually take action, they cant go on strike they cant fight for their rights without drawing attention to themselves and inviting the question "where are your papers". Another case of what we mean by social exclusion.
Young people in Britain now have virtually no rights at all. They are being forced onto government schemes, they are being deprived of benefits.
In many ways when you look at the practice of the Tory government and some of the statements coming from Labour politicians à whole generation has become criminalised. There's a watch on young people now -there's talk of imposing curfews in certain areas to get people off the streets.
Young people can be stopped in the same way as migrants can be stopped in Europe, asked where they live, what their doing there.
It's the rise of a law and order society.