CAMPAIGNERS are hoping people power will persuade Eurostar bosses not to scrap continental train services from Ashford International.

An all-party delegation of politicians from the area visited the company’s head office at Waterloo station this morning and presented a petition signed by 8,000 people demanding the retention of trains to Brussels from Ashford.

Although the group was led by Ashford MP Damian Green, along with Kent County Council (KCC) cabinet member for regeneration Roger Gough and Ashford Borough Council (ABC) leader Paul Clokie, the real star of the campaign was not an elected politician, but a retired teacher.

Edith Robson, a former French teacher at the Towers School, started up the petition in January, and since then she has worked to get maximum support for it, both in Ashford and further afield.

She enlisted the support of dozens of shops and businesses in the town, asking them to display copies for their customers to sign. She also met South East MEPs in Brussels, and persuaded a group of them to get behind the campaign.

Mrs Robson was not there for the presentation of the petition, but she issued a rallying cry to the campaigners last week, saying: "We collected these signatures in two months. We will not be ignored."

In September, Eurostar announced it was planning to halve the number of trains from Ashford to Paris, and stop Ashford services to Brussels and Lille, with these services transferred to the newly-built Ebbsfleet International station in north Kent.

Meanwhile, KCC spokesman Phil Scrivener said KCC will present the results of its online poll into the future of Eurostar services to the Government by April 9.

The poll asked visitors to the KCC website to choose whether they would rather travel to Brussels and Paris by Eurostar from Ashford or Ebbsfleet. Of the 4,787 respondants, 97 per cent said they prefer Ashford.