Struggling to make his voice heard against the shouting match of the Democratic contest, John McCain yesterday embarked on a week-long tour of “forgotten places” that he said were too often treated with indifference by the rest of America.

The Republican nominee-elect travelled to Selma, Alabama, to recall the bloody beatings suffered by civil rights marchers at the hands of sheriffs’ deputies and state troopers.

He described how billy clubs fractured the skull of John Lewis, now a Democrat Congressman from Georgia, when the march tried to cross the Edmund Petrus bridge and protest against the denial of votes for black people.

“In America we have always believed that if the day was a disappointment, we would win tomorrow. That’s what John Lewis believed when he marched across this bridge,” said Mr McCain. Although Selma was visited by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton last year, it remains desperately poor and Mr McCain said that that was why he had chosen it to kick-off his “Time for Action” tour.

“There must be no forgotten places in America, whether they have been ignored for long years by the sins of indifference and injustice, or have been left behind as the world grew smaller and more economically interdependent,” he said.

Later this week he will visit Youngs-town, Ohio, eastern Kentucky and New Orleans’s Ninth Ward, which is still waiting to be rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina.

Mr McCain yesterday appeared to contrast his message of action against the promised hope offered by Mr Obama, saying: “We change things and we make history. Hope in America is not based in delusion, but in the faith that everything is possible in America. The time for pandering and false promises is over. It is time for action. It is time for change; the right kind of change; change that trusts in the strength of free people and free markets.”

His audience of about 100 people was overwhelmingly white, despite the local population being 70 per cent black. Asked about the make-up of the crowd, Mr McCain replied: “I am aware the African-American vote has been very small in favour of the Republican Party. I am aware of the challenges, and I am aware of the fact that there will be many people who will not vote for me.”

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