CARE workers are marching more than 30 miles across the north to the Tory Party conference in Manchester to express their outrage at the unprecedented crisis hitting the sector.

The “Stand up and walk for social care” marchers set off from Burnley in Lancashire today and will hike through Accrington, Blackburn, Darwen, Egerton, Bolton and Salford, before arriving in Manchester tomorrow.

They will join tens of thousands of trade unionists and campaigners who are expected to make their voices heard outside the Conservative Party annual conference as part of the People’s Assembly demonstration.

The national demonstration, United Against The Tories, will protest against the government’s failings, from its corruption and cronyism during the Covid-19 pandemic to its failures to tackle social, economic, environmental and international justice.

Thousands of social care workers have been driven out by low pay and poor working conditions since the Tories delivered the sector into the hands of profit-driven privateers.

The crisis is leaving hospital beds blocked with vulnerable, elderly and disabled people with nowhere to go.

The care marchers are using their trek to tell the public about the depth of the social care crisis, and to urge support for tomorrow’s protest.

Lancashire care worker and march organiser Brett Marsden said: “Last year, we watched as politicians stood on their doorsteps and clapped for carers,” he said.

“We are walking to Conservative Party conference in Manchester to tell the government that it’s time it turned the clapping into action.

“The social care sector is in crisis and we hope that our walk draws attention to this problem so that we can convince the government to make a genuine effort to save social care.”

Members of public service union Unison are also among those making the trek.

Unison Bridgewater Community Health branch secretary Denise Bradley said: “The government said two years ago that it would ‘fix’ the social care sector. 

“But in the Queen’s speech, the social care sector was overlooked yet again.

“The government’s recent solution to the care crisis has simply been to raise taxes through a National Insurance hike.

“This will do nothing to solve the huge problems in the sector and penalises care workers themselves who so sorely need a pay increase, not a tax increase.

“It speaks volumes that care workers — the experts on the sector — felt that the only way they could be listened to is by walking over 30 miles to Conservative Party Conference. It’s time for the government to listen.”

Protests in Manchester are beginning even before the Tories take their seats at the conference.

Tomorrow Gypsy, Traveller and Roma (GTR) communities are in Manchester to shout their opposition to the government’s draconian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which will effectively criminalise them.

The Bill has triggered a wave of protests from the GTR communities across Britain, who have united to create the Drive to Survive coalition group.

Campaign co-chair Sherrie Smith told the Morning Star: “What we’re saying is look at our rich culture and history, look at our vardos, our wagons — for hundreds of years we’ve travelled the UK.

“The message we’re trying to send to the Tories is: ‘Look at us, we’re beautiful.’

“The day the Bill becomes law is day one,” she said. “What we’re doing now is the prelude, making the community politically aware.

“We won’t give up, we won’t conform, we won’t quietly walk away and take this, we’ll keep challenging it.”