THE People’s March for the NHS received a rapturous welcome from more than 1,000 supporters when it arrived in Nottingham on Thursday.

The marchers had walked from Mansfield on their latest leg of the march, and yesterday made the trek to Loughborough.

On the way to Nottingham they were joined by 500 supporters who took part in that leg of the march.

When they arrived at Nottingham Forest football club’s ground another 500 cheered them.

“It was the biggest reception yet,” said Rehana Azam, NHS national organiser for general union GMB, who is one of the 300-mile marchers.

The marchers passed through the former Nottinghamshire coalfield towns and villages of Sutton, Annesley, Newstead, Hucknall and Bulwell before arriving in Nottingham.

A rally at Forest’s ground heard speeches from Nottingham South Labour MP Lilian Greenwood, NHS nurse Lisa Clarke, Sheriff of Nottingham Councillor Jackie Morris, and Ursula Holdsworth, all of whom said that without the NHS their lives would have been much harder.

Pulled together by a group of mothers in Darlington, the Darlomums, who were horrified and furious at the privatisation and destruction of the NHS by the Con-Dems, the march began in Jarrow in north-east England on Saturday August 16, where it was seen off by 2,000 supporters.

They are following the route of the 1936 Jarrow Crusade, which was a protest against unemployment and deprivation.

Today the marchers head for Leicester. They arrive in London on September 6.