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‘They do it by stealth, slowly, so people don’t realise it is happening’
LUCY WOOD reports from the Colchester protest against NHS cuts and privatisation last weekend

THE NHS turned 73 this weekend and in celebration, staff and supporters took to the streets in 70 locations across the country to protest over privatisation, patient safety and pay justice. 

The protest in Colchester kicked off from the ruins of an ancient priory built in c1100 — a location that would have provided free medical care and alms to the poor during the medieval era until King Henry VIII appropriated the property of all monasteries, priories, friaries and convents in England to fund his military campaigns in the 1540s or give as gifts to his closest cronies. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

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