Monday 22 December marked the final far-right outing of the year in Kent: a forlorn “festive” parade along Margate seafront, billed by organisers as a celebration of the “true” meaning of Christmas. In reality, it was another demonstration of how isolated and dysfunctional the local far right has become.
The event was fronted by the familiar pairing of ‘Fash Harry’ Hilden and Jodie Scott, who trades online as “Missus Kent”. Scott initially claimed she was suffering from food poisoning and might not attend, before heroically rallying herself and turning up anyway.
Her brief Facebook livestream lasted barely five minutes and was switched off once the scale of the turnout became clear: around 30 supporters, many of them the same hard-core regulars who trail after Hilden and Scott across the county wherever they appear.
Battered bus
Transport was provided by a battered Routemaster double-decker bus owned and driven by Kingsley Hamilton, a perennial activist best known for his anti-ULEZ campaigning and serial election defeats.
He is best known for being arrested in Bromley near a damaged ULEZ camera , wearing latex gloves and a black hoodie with tools and “f*** the ULEZ” stickers in his pockets.
The charges were dropped when a key witness claimed the suspect looked different and appeared to be wearing a balaclava.
Farcical symbol
His bus, alongside Shaun Chaney’s now-ubiquitous slogan-daubed Tesla, was meant to lend the gathering an air of momentum. Instead, it became a symbol of farce.
Anti-racist counter-demonstrators, numbering well over 200, easily outnumbered the marchers, blocked the bus, forced it onto the wrong side of the road and drowned out the group’s chanting all along the seafront.
Eventually, the marchers abandoned the attempt entirely and retreated back onto the bus, leaving town under a chorus of jeers.
The counter-mobilisation was broad and confident, with local residents making clear that Margate was not receptive to imported culture-war theatrics.
As one observer noted online, it was hardly surprising that Scott had considered “pulling a sickie”.
Fallout
The fallout extended beyond the seafront. Several right-wing participants and sympathisers publicly identified themselves online, including Nick Young, a Margate businessman who runs a clothing shop catering to a range of youth subcultures.
He used his social media accounts to denounce anti-racists and even attempted to blacklist a local resident after discovering that the individual – a well-known television actor and comedian – had attended the counter-demonstration.
Scott herself seized on this to amplify conspiracy theories about “paid actors” being present.
Stormed out
The farce did not end there. On the drive home, Hamilton managed to embroil himself in yet another episode of self-inflicted embarrassment.
By his own account, he and his girlfriend stopped for a meal at a Harvester restaurant near Maidstone.
Her behaviour was reportedly so exuberant (lit up like a Christmas tree, you might say) that staff refused to serve her alcohol, then declined to serve Hamilton as well, for fear he might pass it to her.
The pair responded by storming out mid-meal and refusing to pay.
Staff, understandably unimpressed, contacted the police to report two apparently intoxicated people in charge of a double-decker bus. Kent Police duly stopped the vehicle and breathalysed Hamilton.
He was not, in fact, over the limit, although his giddy demeanour suggested a man still intoxicated by the day’s attention rather than by alcohol.
Left fuming
Hilden and Scott were both fuming at the reception that they got.
Posting on his back-up Facebook page (the main one apparently having been reported and locked, yet again), Hilden raged about “getting abuse from the biggest crowd of lefty’s I’ve seen […] wish thay actually had something masculine about em so we could have a tear up lol”, “like a fuckin’ Millwall / West Ham event – that’d be a bit of a laugh”.
Warming to his theme, he continued: “Margate is HQ of lefty liberal communist low life’s .. years ago they would all be in the mental asylum getting electric shock treatment”.
If only the town were still populated by the cast of ‘Only Fools and Horses’, and mods with union-jack stickers on their scooters, he lamented.
Embarrassment
As for Scott, she posted, with just a touch of hyperbole: “Tonight we had lefties run up on us attack our patriots punching and strangling them and then throwing eggs, and bottles of drink at the bus where they could clearly see young children where sitting OUR CHILDREN!”
In fact, video evidence showing the opposite: a noisy but overwhelmingly peaceful counter-protest that successfully hemmed in and neutralised the march.
Fitting end
Taken together, the Margate fiasco was a fitting end to the year for Kent’s far right: tiny numbers, recycled faces, logistical chaos and an ever-widening gap between their inflated rhetoric and the hostility they encounter whenever they venture into public.
For local anti-racists, it was another reminder that sustained, visible opposition works – and that even at Christmas, hate need not go unanswered.
