Remember when legal aid was slashed? The awful effects are taking hold | Frances Ryan
Out of a red-brick shop front in Manchester's Moss Side, the Greater Manchester Law Centre is set to fight for a piece of the welfare state. John Nicholson - a local barrister and chair of the GMLC - puts it like this: "We're not just a law centre. We're a campaign for justice."
To understand exactly how one small, volunteer-run law centre is launching a fightback against the government - and with it, what it represents for towns and cities up and down the country - we have to go back almost four years, to the spring of 2013. This was when the legal aid budget was gutted by 350m a year. Overnight, a cancer patient found "fit for work" or a cleaner sacked for falling pregnant was priced out of the legal system.
When the South Manchester Law Centre closed in 2014, for many it was the final straw, and the impetus to do something
Related: Legal aid cuts creating two-tier justice system, says Amnesty
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