Worldwide bell ringing on 200th anniversary of slavery abolition?

I have just heard that in Bristol Bells Unbound is planned as a ringing commemoration of the exact moment the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act became law in 1807. Bells Unbound aims to get as many people as possible ringing as many bells as possible all round the world. It's a Call to Action for a world-wide ring of Freedom!! I like this idea lots.

Bells Unbound takes place at the precise moment (midday) that George III signed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 200 years ago. Bells Unbound is a commemoration of slaves, a celebration of this resonant act - and a wake-up call for the world today. It is based in Bristol, which was so much a part of the transatlantic slave trade, and where the Cathedral, along with other Bristol City Churches, is already committed to a peal of bells at noon.

Slavery is in our sights this year as an historical barbarity, but the practice has not stopped simply because an Act was passed 200 years ago. Slavery has changed its shape and become part of our modern world.

People trafficking is one example of modern-day slavery. Greens organised a discussion on this trade locally and on our website you can see various letters and news releases on this subject - most recently here. On Sunday 25 February 2007 some of you may have seen The Independent on Sunday ran an article by Sophie Goodchild & Jonathan Thompson; and just the headline makes somber reading: "5,000 child sex slaves in UK" - IoS special investiagtion: Young children sold into prostitution by criminal gangs in Britain." Indeed some 700,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year and even at a conservative estimate there are 27 million slaves today.

We still have so far to go to realise the dream that Martin Luther King had 44 years ago :

"From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last!Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

June Burrough, Centre Director of The Pierian Centre writes: "We also have a dream - to have freedom ring round the world at noon (local time)on Sunday 25thMarch 2007. At noon we will ring bells - church bells, handbells, gongs, bells on morris dancers, bells in pubs and on bicycles. Join us to ring them loud for 5 minutes in a ring of Freedom round the world. Tell everyone and anyone you know to join in!! Please help to publicise the idea with us. Imagine the whole world resonating for 5 minutes at noon! The kind of bell does not matter - the amount of ringing is what we are after."

I've passed this onto various local email lists, a bell ringer I know and a couple of the churches - we'll have to see how it goes. Already Stroud has some events planned for that day - some of which will centre on the Anti-Slavery Arch in Paganhill. It is right to commemorate the Abolition Act, but we mustn't foregt that fight is far from over.

Please sign petition

It was in Hull that William Wilberforce was born in 1807 - it ws he that led the campaign for the abolition all those years ago - it is fitting then that Hull have just launched another petition urging for action today - please sign it at:
www.wilberforce2007.co.uk/