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It will be the biggest employee protest in the 66-year history of the NHS.

Hundreds of thousands of health workers walk out for four hours from 7am on Monday, and “withdraw goodwill” for the rest of the week.

Their unprecedented national action is a protest against Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s refusal to honour a miserly 1% rise awarded by the ­Independent Pay Review Body.

Such is the strength of feeling, members of 10 unions – chiefly Unison, Unite and the GMB – and professional bodies are taking part. Cleaners, nurses, midwives, technical staff... the lot.

With the spectre of Ebola on the horizon, and hospitals on full alert for the arrival of the deadly virus, this is no time for the Government to be picking a fight with front-line health workers.

The NHS won’t be in chaos, because emergency cover will be provided. But there is bound to be some disruption, for which you can blame the Tory politician who takes cash from the taxpayer to learn Mandarin but treats his workers like Chinese coolies.

The Government will belittle the action. They always do.

They will dispute union figures of how many take part. They always do.

They will say it won’t change their mind. They always do.

The Tories have never, ever, recognised the anger and frustration that makes people go on strike.

They still think of it in Victorian terms as “restraint of trade”. Nothing must get in the way of money-making by businessmen who bankroll their party.

It’s this mind-set that makes them the enemy of all decent working people, most starkly in the case of the NHS.

(Image: Getty)

Since 2010, health workers have had their wages frozen, their jobs cut, their employment “outsourced” – ie privatised – their pensions diminished and their morale ripped to shreds.

Is it any wonder that they’ve finally turned round and said: “Enough is enough!”

The amazing thing is that it’s taken so long for their patience to snap.

Yet David Cameron has the brass neck to get emotional about his love of the NHS, exploiting the death of his disabled child to win cheap applause at the Tory conference.

If he and his Cabinet of millionaires understood one iota about the role and value of the men and women who serve so unstintingly in our hospitals, health centres, surgeries and in the homes of patients, they wouldn’t have the nerve to deprive them of a pay rise only half the rate of inflation.

Hunt, a rich man himself, claims that the NHS can’t afford the increase. The Pay Review Body said it could.

He hid behind bogus statistics of ­incremental wage rises, which have been discredited.

Here is the truth: this Tory generation wants to crush trade unionism in the public services, just like Thatcher crushed the miners 30 years ago.

This is Cameron’s dirty little class war against working people who have no defence but their union and the collective strength it gives them.

If he gets his way, the slogan will be “NHS workers, stand on your own two knees!”

That’s why I shall be supporting Monday’s walkout, and I hope you will too.

Read more from Paul Routledge here and int he Daily Mirror