SF: Scores of marchers will parade through Stroud this Sunday to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the act which led to the abolition of slavery. Award-winning young writer Isabelle Ellis-Cockcroft, 15, who attends Archway School, imagines what emancipation would have meant for those who had been denied their freedom for so long.

YEAR after year I refused to give in. Each day I would plan a score of ways to escape my enslavement, to regain my life and freedom.

I could see the plans were futile, clearly doomed to fail; yet still I didn't doubted that soon, maybe tomorrow, perhaps next week, the solution would come.

Time passed, and many made a bid for freedom, some through courage or foolish naivety, some believed they could out-smart the trackers, others simply had to run or give in to despair. All were caught and though the punishments varied through my master's violent, twisted creativity, all were equal in their malice and horror.

Slowly I lost faith in my ability to escape, and with no hope to sustain me I drew back inside myself. The days passed in a blur, with my body subconsciously carrying out the backbreaking work of the day.

The pain of the relentless labour felt distant and the heart-wrenching cries of tormented slaves no longer reached me.

But neither could I hear the calls of birds that heralded the dawn, or feel the comforting warmth of the sun on my cheek.

I couldn't recall the sight of my home or picture the faces of my family. My body might carry on, with food to maintain it, but with out hope to feed on, my mind wasted away.

If I'd had it in me to take my own life then I would have done so. Little penetrated into my starved mind, but one day I came out of myself enough to overhear the wisps of a conversation.

Two slaves took a rare moments rest under the shadow of an ancient gnarled tree. Their whispers, carried on the wind to my long dead ears, brought me news that there were to be no more slaves captured. No more innocents dragged from their homes or families torn apart.

Some people, despite their white skin like the slavers, had seen that slavery was wrong. Were slaves no longer seen as mere animals, lesser beings created by the Christian God to serve all white folk?

I had not thought the slavers unintelligent, although if I had then their blindness to the evil they committed would have been easier to understand and to bear. Perhaps I had almost come to believe I truly was worth only the barrel of rotten, fermented drink that had been paid for me.

The revelation that some of the whites might see us as human struck me as incredible.

With this I felt a shift in my mind. No longer us' and them,' no longer slave and master, just people. Some misguided, unaware of the wrong they were doing but all people none the less.

And others had seen this, despite their different skin. And I saw that underneath we were all the same and all equal. Suddenly I could see an end to my torment and the suffering of my people.

I felt a change in me then. My frozen heart began to thaw. A beautiful flower, full of new hope and life bloomed within me, bringing me back to myself. I felt the hot ground beneath my bare feet and heard the breeze stir the sugar cane; my dormant mind revived.

Joy coursed though me, a joy so fierce that the tears rising behind my eyes hurt. Tears overflowed to course down my shrunken cheeks and I felt unfamiliar muscles in my face twitch, trying to recall the forgotten movement of a smile, once given so freely. I could almost taste the freedom that would soon be mine.

I know that freedom will be given to all of us still kept enslaved. It won't be long now. But such freedom for slaves will be too late for me, even if it is granted tomorrow. I can feel my life slipping away, drawing to a close.

My mind has been revived but my long enduring body has finally given out.

Broken by the unforgiving, unending work of the slave. I feel the lush coolness of a damp cloth held to my forehead. Comforting, but an utterly hopeless attempt to douse the raging fires of fever that burn away my flesh.

My eyelids flicker, the darkness closes in. As death takes me I hear once more the sounds of my home; the distant noise of animals on the plains and the swish of grass, the carefree cries of my son, playing in the shady grove of trees by my home, and the beautiful forgotten murmur of my own voice raised in song.

* Sunday's march starts with a ceremony at 3pm at the slavery arch in Paganhill and culminates with a service in St Laurence's Church at 4.15pm.