JOANNA ADAMS has been dubbed “our resident firebrand” by her fellow campaigners fighting to defend the National Health Service.

She is one of the original “Darlomums” who on August 16 last year set off to walk 300 miles from Jarrow in north-east England to London, stopping off at 23 towns and cities along the way, to raise the alarm about the extent of the coalition government’s destruction of the NHS.

In each community they visited thousands turned out to cheer them on.

Arriving in London, a mile-long column of supporters followed them in to Red Lion Square for a demonstration.

Only 12 to 15 Darlomums and supporters completed the full 300 miles. Another 20-plus did half the distance. But thousands completed short sections of the march to show their support.

After Red Lion Square the Darlomums — so named because they hail from the town of Darlington — returned home.

They still treasure the memories of the experience. But it’s more than memories.

Adams is 42. She has two children aged five and four. She is an office worker in the chemicals industry in north-east England.

She was among founders of the 999 Call for the NHS movement which was involved in the march.

“The first thing I remember on the first day was seeing a big hill in front of us,” Adams says.

“I was at the back, and these lines of people were marching up the hill, and I thought: ‘Look what we’ve done.’ I was amazed.”

She says moments like that were followed by worries about what would happen the next day. Would the marchers be tramping on alone, ignored?

“But that didn’t happen. There really wasn’t a day when we didn’t have support, back-up.

“There are smaller things,” she says. “There was an old lady in her house. She couldn’t walk, but she’d hung our T-shirt up in her window.

“There was a woman who walked with us with two little girls, just toddlers. She said she was walking because her husband had been abusing her and she needed the NHS and she understood the value of a social net to catch people when they are damaged. That’s an angle you don’t think about necessarily.”

Adams explains how, marching through towns, office workers would rush out with drinks and sandwiches.
In every community, church halls, sports halls, people’s homes were thrown open to them.

“That is what stays with me today, the sense of community. If you are a socialist, that is what it is all about. It gives you hope. You are tired, stressed, exhausted. Sometimes you think we’re losing. But then you realise we are not losing.”

Another of the 300-mile marchers was the wonderfully named Icarus Williams from Rochdale in Greater Manchester.

Williams, 24, learned about the march from a flyer. He’d lost his job working in mental health because of cuts and was — and still is — scratching a living as a musical entertainer.

“I’d no money, but I found out there was accommodation on the march,” he says.

“I’d got the essentials — rucksack, sleeping bag, walking boots. I did some walking in preparation, but there was nothing you could do about emotional preparation — walking for three weeks with a group of people you’d never met.”

He says the walkers guessed that during the initial trek from Jarrow down through north-east England, they would have public support. But then came North Yorkshire — the marchers called it the “Blue Belt” — with its shire county affluence.

“We thought we were going to struggle,” he says.

“But all the socialists of North Yorkshire came out of the woodwork. They knew how much support we needed. And that continued right the way down.”

In each city, town or small community they reached, ordinary people turned out to support them, organising rallies, welcome speeches, facilities.

“The atmosphere was electric. It took over every town. People warmed to us. There was nowhere where we had a bad response.

“People let us into their homes to use the loo,” says Williams.

When the march was over and the jubilant campaigners returned home there was a period of respite.

But the march had sparked a flame of resistance in communities where there had been little.

Local groups sprang up across the country and continue campaigning today — particularly as the general election approaches.

Adams is back at work and bringing up her children — but is still a committed activist. Williams is still out of work, but his campaigning goes on.

“One way I can contribute is as a musician, turning up for political gigs,” he says. “I play at a lot of gigs, usually for free because they’re for political campaigns.”

Both Adams and Williams believe the march played some part in putting a national spotlight on what the coalition government is doing to the NHS — the continuing privatisation, the corruption of political donors handing cash to the Tories and receiving hundreds of millions of pounds in NHS contracts from the goalition government in return and the breaking up of the NHS into self-managed regions, as with the devolution of services to Greater Manchester.

The marchers also hope that they contributed to the emergence of the NHS as perhaps the single most emotive issue on the political agenda in the run-up to the general election.

“I would not say we were responsible for that, but we definitely played a part,” says Adams.

“I was at a hustings in Darlington last night. It was with Friends of the Earth. It wasn’t about the NHS, but people ended up talking about the NHS.

“People are so passionate about it. It’s inspiring. They may not understand the politics of it all, but they know what it symbolises.”

She also recognises that the Tories — whatever their promises — have no intention of retaining the NHS, that privatisation and eventually the complete dismantling of the NHS is their only agenda.

“The way I look at it is that our campaign was not really aimed at the Tories. It was aimed at Labour,” she says.

“We had a lot of Labour MPs came to the march, but our view was: ‘Yes, you’re here, but what are you doing about it?’ We wanted them to realise that we are not going to let them off the hook.

“Our job is to make sure Labour knows that what we want is complete renationalisation of the NHS.”

• Icarus Williams will be on the bill at a Morning Star benefit concert at the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire tomorrow from 2pm to 6pm. For more information visit bit.ly/1NZqEPP.