Sean O'Grady: How the people reclaimed their rights

The British Bankers' Association dismisses the estimates of the amounts they will have to repay to their overcharged customers as "totted up on the back of a fag packet".

Such language betrays the very arrogance that has left them in this predicament. Even if the upper estimates of the sums involved are seen to be inflated, the banks will still have to return hundreds of millions of pounds.

This is unprecedented. It is a sign that consumerism has come of age. It has done so, most unexpectedly, with the aid of a technology that was supposed to be atomising society. Instead, the internet has given campaigning groups the sort of access to their constituency that was difficult before. Even successful class actions, from the thalidomide case to moves against the tobacco giants, have suffered from an inability to organise and act quickly. The internet has changed all that.

We've seen similar activity in American politics, and we've witnessed the way it has revolutionised the availability of information. Now we know it can help us humble some of the biggest corporate beasts in the jungle. Who's next? The boards of directors of fast-food firms, the big supermarket chains, every oil company and every airline will have to adjust to this emerging world.

If the internet helps consumers to break some of that exploitative pricing power, it will prove to be a far more powerful creator of wealth and happiness than we have yet thought possible.

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