From marches to meetups, the playbook is shifting
How hard-right organisers are testing Medway, plus asset sales, hunting communists, and very good dogs
Today's Local Authority examines attempts by hard-right organisers from outside Medway to test different routes into public space, from a small anti-migrant march to a more polished women’s safety meeting promoted in online spaces linked to far-right politics. We also report on Medway Council selling the freehold of a Gillingham industrial estate, a Trading Standards operation that produced an impressive haul and even better dogs, and Reform’s latest contribution to local political spectacle...
Hard right organisers are importing their politics into Medway and testing two routes into public space
Two separate hard-right organising efforts are being pushed towards Medway for next month. Neither appears to be rooted in local campaigning, with both being driven by people from outside the area. One is the familiar march theatre, loud online and likely thin on the ground. The other is more polished, wrapped in the language of women’s safety, and promoted in the same Facebook spaces that churn out anti-migrant and anti-trans rhetoric. That combination is worth paying attention to, even if it is currently small.
The first strand is an anti-migrant march being promoted for Saturday 7 March from Gillingham station, with Medway Council's Gun Wharf headquarters as the final destination. It is being pushed by a Maidstone-based activist who runs a one-man micro-party primarily on TikTok. His promo material talks a big game, including one advert claiming it will be 'a big march' with '5 group’s [sic] teaming up as one.' That is, to put it gently, ambitious.
We attended one of his recent protests in Rochester, which did not exactly bring the county to a standstill. Another attempt to organise something similar in Maidstone earlier this month was called off hours before it was due to take place, with bad weather cited as the reason. Searchlight, which monitors far-right activity, independent promotion from other organisations, and the only sign of notice outside his TikTok output is a single post that appeared in a local Gillingham Facebook group that the cancelled Maidstone event was heavily promoted online but failed to attract sufficient support.
Ed Jennings
What’s striking about this latest push is how little evidence there is that it has travelled beyond the organiser’s own channels. We’ve seen no independent promotion from other organisations, and the only sign of notice outside his TikTok output is a single post that appeared in a local Gillingham Facebook group. This matters because if you’re trying to work out whether something is about to become a thing, one of the easiest tells is whether it starts spreading without the organiser having to drag it around the internet by the scruff of the neck.
That doesn’t mean it should be ignored. Even a small march is still a public attempt to normalise hostile politics in the town centre, and it can still make people feel uncomfortable or unsafe, particularly if you are the sort of resident these movements like to talk about as a problem rather than a person. But based on what we’ve seen so far, this looks less like a wave and more like someone trying to create the impression of one.
The second strand is more concerning because it is a different tactic.
A group using the branding 'Kent Women First' has been promoting a meeting at the Command House pub in Chatham, presenting it as an initiative focused on women’s safety. The flyer promises a women’s circle, discussion of safety and wellbeing, and practical guidance on reporting crime. It is pitched as supportive, validating, and entirely reasonable.
It also includes a line stating it is a 'Biological Female Only' event.
That wording is not a neutral safeguarding measure. It is a political signal, and it sits at the heart of a strategy we have increasingly seen nationally. Wrap a hard-edged culture war agenda in the language of common sense and public safety, then use the resulting 'what, you don’t care about women?' dynamic to bulldoze past scrutiny.
We’re looking at this event because the flyer is being circulated in Facebook spaces that are littered with anti-migrant and anti-trans content, alongside promotion for far-right marches. Searchlight has also reported on the same network, describing it as an attempt to present itself as a grassroots women’s safety initiative while pushing hard-right, anti-migrant politics, and identifying it as a local offshoot of a wider 'British Women First Pink Ladies' brand. Searchlight reports the national network operates largely through Facebook and TikTok, where posts repeatedly conflate women’s safety with anti-migrant narratives and portray immigration as an inherent threat.
The Command House told us that the booking had been presented to them purely as a women’s safety event and that they were unaware of the wider context in which the flyer had been shared online. They added that the pub is inclusive and welcoming to everyone.
This is the key point. If the march is likely to have low attendance, the women’s safety framing is the more effective route to normalising the politics behind it. It looks less like a protest and more like community organising. It asks fewer people to out themselves as extremists and more people to nod along with the soft parts until the hard parts stop feeling shocking.
We approached Medway Council for comment on the march, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
In the meantime, it is worth being clear-eyed about what this is and what it isn’t. We are not looking at a mass movement about to sweep through Medway. We are looking at small, online-driven attempts to, for lack of a better term, plant flags in public space. One of them is likely to struggle to attract an audience. The other is a reminder that the most successful political organising rarely arrives wearing a fascist badge. It arrives claiming it is just keeping women safe, being reasonable, and offering support, only to become clear later who the 'safe' part of that promise is meant to exclude.
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Gillingham industrial estate sold off for £775,000
Medway Council has sold the freehold of the Railway Street Industrial Estate in Gillingham for £775,000, completing the deal earlier this month. The estate was one of the sites put on the sell off list back in October 2024, when the council set out plans to raise roughly £35m by disposing of 30 'non operational' properties to help plug the financial hole.
Ed Jennings
The crucial bit of context is the small print. This was a freehold sale, but it is subject to a long lease running until September 2104. So if your mental picture is of a council selling an industrial estate and next week someone turns up with a glossy masterplan, that shouldn't be the case. This is an ownership change underneath an existing structure that is meant to keep running for the best part of another century. In most cases, the person with the long lease is the one with the day to day control, while the freeholder is the one holding the underlying title and waiting a very long time for the big moment.
That matters because Railway Street is not some vacant plot hiding behind a hedge. It is a working estate in a prime town centre location, and it houses several car-related businesses in particular: Garages, tyres, detailing, or the kind of places that sit quietly in the background until the day you need them, at which point they suddenly become the most important part of your week.
The council’s decision document says the freehold was offered on the open market and frames the deal as generating 'revenue savings and a capital receipt.' Fine, but the document does not explain what those revenue savings are in this specific case, or how big they are, or what exactly the council has stopped paying for, given the long lease. We asked Medway Council for further details of the sale and whether there are any restrictions or conditions that affect what can happen on the site in the future, but didn't receive a reply before publication.
The wider point is that this is the disposal plan moving from spreadsheet to real life. Railway Street was on the list, and it has now been sold. The council says this is about savings as well as a capital receipt, but it points to a pattern in which Medway is selling off parts of its estate to make the numbers work, and asking residents to trust that the consequences will be someone else’s problem much later.
We're only here for the dogs
Medway Council has uncovered nearly 1.5 million illegal cigarettes and, yes, we understand that this is a serious story about organised crime, lost duty, and the fact some people will go to astonishing lengths to avoid paying tax. But we’re going to be honest about what has happened here. The council has issued a press release that is, in practice, a vehicle for photos of extremely good dogs.
The basics, for the record. Trading Standards and Public Protection officers led a two-day operation on 12-13 February with Kent Police and a specialist sniffer dog team. They seized 1,469,640 cigarettes, 148.5kg of hand-rolling tobacco and 1,130 illegal vapes, with an estimated street value of £650,000. Most of the haul was found at a self-storage premises, where the council says tobacco worth around £600,000 was stashed across five lockers.
Now, about the dogs.
In the first photo, you have what appears to be a small committee of working animals sitting in perfect formation, staring into the middle distance like they’ve just been promised a biscuit for services rendered to the Crown. One looks like he’s halfway through a thought about whether this counts as overtime. Another is giving off a strong 'I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed' vibe. This is the kind of operational discipline Medway can only aspire to in its roadworks planning team.
In the second, one of them is pictured in a van beside the seized tobacco, posing in front of a wall of illicit cigarettes like the main character in a gritty BBC One drama. There is no swagger, just quiet competence and the faint sense that he knows he’s the star of the entire operation.
The press release also includes details that feel almost unfairly cinematic. Evidence suggested some of the tobacco was smuggled into the country hidden inside deep-fat fryer units. If you’ve ever wondered what the Venn diagram overlap is between chip shop equipment and international smuggling, congratulations, Medway Council has now answered that for you, and again, we would like to stress that the dogs found it.
Councillor Alex Paterson, the cabinet member responsible for enforcement, said the seizure “sends a message loud and clear” that the council will not tolerate illegal trading, and a Kent Police inspector said the trade is often linked to wider criminality and will be targeted. Those selling illegal tobacco can face penalties of up to £10,000 and prosecution in some cases. All important, all true.
But the real message being sent loud and clear is that Medway has access to a specialist sniffer dog team and, frankly, should be deploying them more often. If Trading Standards want to keep seizing illegal vapes and tobacco, we fully support it. If they want to keep doing it while supplying the public with pictures of dogs who look like they’ve just solved a case and are ready for a nap, we support it even more.
Reform starts hunting the communists
Reform's Chatham & Aylesford branch took to Facebook this week to announce that 'British patriots will be out defeating Communism, come rain or shine,' which is a sentence you do not expect to read in 2026 unless you’ve accidentally opened a badly translated leaflet from 1979.
There is, obviously, a follow-up question here, which is: What communists? Where are they? What are we imagining in this scenario? Are they in the Rainham precinct, quietly nationalising Boyce's Bakery? Are they hiding in the queue for the 101, distributing free copies of Das Kapital to anyone who looks like they’ve given up on Arriva? Are they inside Medway Council’s procurement team, insisting that the patio furniture at the pub be brought under collective ownership?
It’s also conveniently vague. No details, examples, or explanations. Just 'communism' as a sort of political swear word you deploy when you’d rather not say what you’re actually on about.
Still, fair play. If you’re going to position yourself as the last line of defence against a mysterious ideological enemy, at least they are doing it properly, with umbrellas up and placards out. The revolution will be rained on.
Footnotes
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