Kent ‘flaggers’ look to turn up the heat on county council

Barely a month after Searchlight reported on the jailing of Sam Turner, the prominent Medway flagger and serial offender is back on the streets, and back among familiar company. Turner, notorious locally for a long catalogue of offences that includes the farcical burglary of Gillingham Football Club, has been released from prison after serving just…

Harry Hilden Faversham demo Nov 2025
Harry Hilden leads anti-immigration march in Faversham last November

Barely a month after Searchlight reported on the jailing of Sam Turner, the prominent Medway flagger and serial offender is back on the streets, and back among familiar company.

Turner, notorious locally for a long catalogue of offences that includes the farcical burglary of Gillingham Football Club, has been released from prison after serving just five-and-a-half weeks of a six-month sentence.

Sam Turn
Sam Turner on a demonstration last year

He announced the news on Facebook proudly drawing attention to the Searchlight coverage of his imprisonment and basking in the approval it had evidently won him.

His post was soon awash with congratulatory messages from supporters. And quick to offer his support was Harry Hilden, the Kent-based anti-migrant agitator whose own activities have recently taken a more openly confrontational turn.

As we have previously reported, Hilden has organised a number of usually poorly-attended protests in Faversham and other Kent towns, targeting asylum accommodation and whipping up hostility towards migrants.

Now, in a recent video, he has declared that marching in Faversham and “random street protests” are “not enough”. The real target, he argues, should be Kent County Council, which he blames for providing accommodation for asylum seekers.

Interference

He is now calling for a march on County Hall in Maidstone on Saturday 28 February 2026, with the explicit intention of making such protests a regular occurrence until, as he puts it, all asylum centres in the county are shut.

In the same video, he hints at direct interference with council business itself: “I’ve got the links now to what meetings there is in the council offices, so if there’s any what is going to put our communities in danger, then we will get in them and oppose it.”

Harry Hilden, Faversham march 2025
Harry Hilden – No more random protests

Given what happened at Swale council, and his role in it, this is little more than a thinly veiled endorsement of disruption and intimidation.

Conspicuously absent from Hilden’s account is any mention of the fact that Kent County Council has been controlled by Reform UK since May 2025.

Street pressure

When a supporter suggested mobilising “patriots” within Kent councils to vote the “right way”, Hilden dismissed the idea of relying on elected representatives at all: “So you think we should sit back [and] put our faith in councillors to do something for us and just vote?”

The message is clear: electoral politics are to be bypassed in favour of pressure from the street.

That message resonated with Jodie Scott aka MissusKent, another high profile local campaigner.

Scott, as we have reported, has recently oscillated between exhaustion with conventional protest and an appetite for escalation. While she has declared further marches to be a “waste of time”, she appears to view stunts that flirt with illegality or insurrection as something quite different.

In a series of videos posted recently, she outlined what she sees as a new direction for the UK far right.

Admitting that months of frenetic activity had achieved little, she announced: “I’m honestly at the point where I’m just not protesting anymore – like, what is the point? … We’ve got to start upping the game now. We’ve really gotta start going for the source of the problem … It’s the establishment.”

Seize power

Her proposed alternative was support for the so-called “Great British National Strike” planned for February 2026, promoted by far-right grifter Richard Donaldson, the former soldier from Chester. In practice, Scott’s description of the plan amounted to not going to the shops for a week – after stocking up in advance.

More revealing, and more worrying, were Scott’s reflections on last September’s “Unite the Kingdom” march in London. She suggested that it should have been transformed into an outright bid to seize power:

“That should have been the day when we stood up to the establishment … We should have stormed the gates!” She went on, only half-joking, to claim that the crowd should have “arrested them all for high treason”, invoking conspiracy theories about COVID vaccines and “crimes against humanity”.

Backlash

When Scott reiterated these views in a written Facebook post the following day, insisting that she would “always continue to speak my truth”, she was met with a backlash from some of her own followers. Subsequent videos show her railing against supposed attempts to silence her, accusing critics of “Antifa behaviour” and “far-left behaviour”.

One follower bluntly accused Scott of hypocrisy for deleting dissenting comments while preaching free speech. Scott, in response, complained of “ganging up”, abuse and even death threats.

Taken together, comments from Hilden and Scott suggest a far-right scene in Kent that is restless and increasingly impatient with both the law and electoral politics. The drift away from protest and towards anti-democratic disruption should not be underestimated.


Paul Nowak

Paul Nowak

The essence of trade unionism is solidarity, fairness and equality – for all workers – from all backgrounds. That’s why our fight against the far-right has always been part of our movement’s DNA. Searchlight is an incredibly important resource for trade unions and members to understand the contemporary tactics of far-right activity. Their work and intelligence gathering over the years have been incredibly insightful for the work we do, and how we fight the scourge of fascism.

Paul Nowak
TUC General Secretary

Professor Colin Holmes

Professor Colin Holmes
Everyone who wants to understand contemporary racism and its historical background needs to read Searchlight.
Professor Colin Holmes
University of Sheffield

Peter Hain

Peter Hain, founder of the ANL and friend of Searchlight

British Jews have been persecuted over the centuries; British blacks since the Windrush generation of the 1950s; British Muslims, especially after the Islamist 9/11 and then 7/7 terrorist attacks in New York 2001 and London 2005. But until the last few years there has not been a simultaneous threat against all three British communities of Jewish, Black and Muslim Britons – meaning the need for Searchlight has never been greater.

Peter Hain
Labour peer, former MP and Cabinet Minster

Paul Holborow

Paul Holborow

In the campaign against the National Front, Searchlight provided a rich and utterly reliable basis for much ANL propaganda – particularly with reference to the two leading NF figures, John Tyndall and Martin Webster. The appearance of Tyndall in full nazi uniform, drawn from the archives of Searchlight, was a key part of ANL propaganda, coupled with deeply damaging nazi quotes from Webster.

Paul Holborow
Founding member of the ANL and National Organiser 1977-81

Nick Davies

Nick Davies

To investigate fascists takes real courage and unusual commitment. The government, police, mainstream media occasionally take a look, but in the UK only Searchlight have kept at it, relentlessly and admirably, regardless of threat or obstacle. It’s journalism that matters. A rare thing.

Nick Davies
Multi-award-winning investigative journalist and writer

Alf Dubs

Lord Alf Dubs

Searchlight’s voice is more important than ever, and I am delighted that it will now be available to a wider audience than ever before in its new incarnation online. Searchlight has been extremely helpful over the years in exposing the far right, corruption, criminality and the murky links between organised crime and powerful interests in the UK and abroad. I wish Searchlight the very best.

Alf Dubs
Labour peer, former MP and Cabinet Minister, and Kindertransport child

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