The Internet is a great equaliser, allowing the mouse to roar against the lion. The world-wide community of computer users has become an effective tool for collective actions as Halifax Plc, Britain's largest mortgage lender, is learning at its peril.

A Liverpudlian in Brazil is the bank's tormentor. Armed with a computer and access to the Internet Brian Hazlehurst is leading an on-line campaign against the exclusion from free shares of 100,000 overseas members when the former Halifax building society was floated on the stock market last year.

Mr. Hazlehurst believes he was wronged by Halifax. From his apartment in Rio de Janeiro (and he has a good view of the ocean) he set up a United Halifax Victims (UNHAV) website soon after the offering. Within months he soon found 700 other expatriates -- including six in Bermuda -- who were willing to band together with him to fight and embarrass Halifax in court.

His is an uplifting story about the strength of individual action against a monolithic institution which believes it can ride roughshod over a group of people it counted on not being able to get together and fight. Yes, this is the age of the Internet and even if the campaign doesn't work and Mr.

Hazlehurst doesn't get what he and others want, the battle should serve as a warning shot to other institutions with the same ideas.

"It's one of the first Internet campaigns,'' he told The Royal Gazette over the telephone. "Halifax didn't count on a scattered group and their ability to band together. With the Internet it's cheap and fast.'' Mr. Hazlehurst, a freelance translator, moved to Brazil about 19 years ago from Ethiopia, where he was held hostage in 1976 for five months by the Eritrean Liberation Front. He is an economist by training.

About six years ago he put 23,000 in Halifax, making him eligible for about 10,000 worth of shares when it was demutualised in a $30 billion stockmarket flotation.

On average Halifax's eight million members were due to receive about 2,400 each in shares or cash.

However, Halifax decided to exclude 100,000 investors living in countries where it believed it was "onerous'' to comply with securities laws or where there were what it considered an "immaterial'' number of investors -- places with less than 1,000 depositors.

The members could have used addresses in one of the 27 "permitted'' countries, but Mr. Hazlehurst said many were told this too late.

Halifax went even further when it excluded another 214,000 members or heirs of members due to other factors it imposed on the share distribution. Mr.

Hazlehurst has expanded his campaign to include them as well.

Under the slogan "All UNHAVs shall be HAVEs'' he has managed to help form activist branches in 29 countries. The group is in the process of collecting money to pay for a lawyer who will begin action against Halifax. The Canadian group has already decided to proceed with a separate litigation on the advice of lawyers, Mr. Hazlehurst said.

So far his campaign has not led Halifax to budge from its position. The company has told the media most of the disaffected could have received shares if they had paid closer attention to the 166-page conversion document distributed in January 1997.

However, there are signs that what Mr. Hazlehurst calls his "noise storm'' are working. A host of UK newspapers and magazines have discovered his story.

Citing Mr. Hazlehurst as an example, the UK's Financial Mail has announced it will take Halifax to court on behalf of minors banned by Halifax from the conversion.

Mr. Hazlehurst is still adding new members to the cause every day and garnering money into a war fund for the impending court battle. It's not the money he says. He just doesn't like the way he was treated.

"On principle alone, I wouldn't like anyone to miss out on this chance of legal redress against such atrocities,'' Mr. Hazlehurst states on his web site. "I am determined to have all cheated member categories of all converted building society members mobilised parading in the legal `Carnival'.'' Go to the UNHAV site at www.rain.org yjmhmps nhav.html for details of the campaign. It's an interesting example of the opportunities the Internet gives to those who want to fight what they believe is an injustice.

"It will be like David slaying the giant if we win,'' Mr. Hazlehurst said.

All the power of the web to him.

The computer v-chip should be installed in television sets coming on the market next year. A 1996 US telecommunications law specifies televisions with screens 13 inches and larger must have the blocking technology. The v-chip will allow parents to block out programmes with TV ratings for sex, violent and language content.

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