Marching orders
The far-right plot two protests for Medway. Plus Medway's lonely reorganisation to be examined, news in brief, and more
As anti-immigration protests swept across Kent, it was inevitable that they’d eventually get to Medway. Now, with the reliability of an Arriva bus, after months of nothing, two have been scheduled for a two-week period over the next month or so. We’ve got the full details of each and who is behind them below. Further down, we get back to maps and local government reorganisation after the Conservative opposition decided to call in Labour’s doomed plan, news in brief, and more.
Marching orders
Medway is about to see two far-right protests within a fortnight. The posters promoting them are full of typos and contradictions, but the intentions behind them should not be dismissed.
The first is lined up for Saturday 18 October in Rochester. Depending on which version of the poster you have seen, it is either a UKIP protest or a ‘Bring Our Nation Together’ march. Both direct people to gather at ‘the car park opposite Rochester station’ at 1pm, a location so vague it could refer to at least four different places.
The event appears to be organised by Cllr Amelia Randall, who was elected as a Reform councillor in Birchington in May before defecting to UKIP a few weeks ago. She promoted it online with the promise that similar events will be held “throughout Kent” over the next year, accompanied by purple hearts, Christian crosses and Union flag emojis.
Randall's first effort was not particularly successful. Last weekend, she organised a UKIP-branded protest in Margate that attracted about nine people, who were met by hundreds of counter-protestors. UKIP leader Nick Tenconi has been trying to turn these small events into a platform. At a recent Maidstone ‘stop the boats’ protest, he took over the megaphone and led part of the march himself. Rochester could provide another stage if he decides to turn up.
A counter-protest is already planned. Posters advertising a ‘Unite for Rochester’ event propose meeting on the High Street half an hour before the UKIP start time with the call to resist the far right and defend the community.
Two weeks later, on Saturday 1 November, Medway faces another protest. This one appears to be organised by the group that has been covering lampposts and roundabouts with flags. They describe their work as ‘community pride.’ Medway Council leader Vince Maple described it last week as intimidation by far-right agitators.
Their attempt at protest organisation has been pretty sloppy. The first poster carried a Canva watermark, urged people to ‘make you views heard people power!!’ and credited ‘Turner productins.’ The second spelt the month as ‘novemeber.’ The third declared ‘Fed up with how Medways looking’ and set the route from ‘Gunwharf car park too Anchorage House.’
The slogans shift from ‘stop the boats’ to digital ID conspiracy theories to general complaints about Medway. The design work is amateur, but the underlying message is consistent: migrants presented as a problem, councils accused of betrayal, and calls for confrontation dressed up as community spirit.
Their chosen destination underlines the misinformation. Anchorage House has been presented as an asylum seeker facility, with organisers claiming it is “on lockdown with security and fencing” and hinting at hidden activity. In reality, it is leased by Newham Council and used for homeless families from the London borough, with some units used by Medway Council. The November protest is not targeting asylum seekers. It is targeting vulnerable families with nowhere else to go.
The tone of the organisers’ posts leaves little doubt about intent. One, writing on Facebook, said that it’s “time to stop the bullshit and make the women and kids of Medway safe again” and “Time to stand up to these shit c**ts above who don’t give a shit about any of us or our family’s.” The familiar pattern is there, with claims of protecting women and children, anger at authority, and blame pushed onto migrants and councils.
Medway has seen this before. Last summer, a group protested outside the Medway Innovation Centre in Rochester. Counter-protestors met them, police imposed dispersal orders, and arrests were made, but things ultimately fizzled out.
In 2014, Britain First attempted a march through Rochester during the by-election campaign. They brought a few dozen supporters. Hundreds of counter-protestors lined the streets. There were confrontations, with the far-right being blocked from entering the High Street, eventually retreating back to the station.
The current wave is part of something wider. In recent weeks, anti-immigration protests have appeared in Canterbury, Faversham and Folkestone. Medway is simply the latest addition.
The posters are easy to laugh at, with UKIP unable to specify a car park and the flaggers unable to spell November. Yet this does not make the message less serious. Behind the mistakes is a worldview that casts outsiders as threats and councils as traitors.
Most residents may not notice until the marches are actually on their streets. But history shows these events will not define Medway. They will, however, test it. Whether they sputter out with a handful of marchers or spark confrontation with counter-protests, the risk is the same. A noisy few want to impose division on everyone else. The posters may look ridiculous, but the intentions behind them are not.
Medway’s lonely reorganisation
Medway Council’s Cabinet has voted to pay for a business case for its own version of local government reform, even though the plan has already been rejected by every other council in Kent. At last week’s Cabinet meeting, Labour administration councillors agreed to commission accountants KPMG to put together a business case for their own design for the future of Kent: a four-council map drawn up over the summer inside Gun Wharf.
The trouble is that the map has no supporters outside Medway. When it was unveiled to Kent Leaders in August, other council leaders condemned it for being dumped on them late, bypassing the cross-party working group and casually redrawing their boundaries without discussion. Matt Boughton, the leader of Tonbridge and Malling, was so irate that it seemed believable that he’d be riding a tank up Blue Bell Hill to protect ‘his’ territory. Kent Leaders instead backed two more conventional options: a three-council model and a four-council model based on existing district lines.
Despite that, Medway has pressed on. Leader Vince Maple told Cabinet it was a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to correct the mistakes of the 1970s, when the current set-up was devised, and that the council had a duty to put forward the option it thought best for its residents. He pointed out that £874,000 had been ring-fenced in February’s budget for local government reorganisation, so there was no fresh demand on council finances.
The Conservative opposition seems particularly unimpressed by the plan. They fired 13 questions at Cabinet, accused the administration of embarking on a “vanity project for a dead proposal” and demanded to know what consultation had been carried out with Kent Police, the NHS and even Medway’s own councillors. Opposition leader George Perfect then lodged a call-in before the meeting ended, saying the whole process was chaotic and wasteful. He argues that while the money may technically be within budget, choosing not to spend it would itself count as a saving at a time when Medway is reliant on emergency financial support from Whitehall.
The Conservative statement has gone further still, accusing Labour of changing course without consultation, shifting from support for a conventional four-council model earlier in the year to this new bespoke map in August. They claim the resulting business case will be unworkable since it lacks any allies elsewhere in Kent, and that officer time and council reputation are being squandered on something doomed from the start.
Maple has batted that away, saying that if other councils are free to produce their own models - Kent County Council is developing one for a single countywide unitary, and Gravesham and Dartford are pushing a deranged five-council map that would split Medway in two - then Medway has every right to do the same. Without a business case, ministers will never even look at the Medway option. He argues it is better to have it on the table than ignored.
The irony is that Medway’s map is not a bad one. It is more rational than several of the others, tidying up some of the illogical lines drawn in the 1970s and attempting to create authorities that reflect communities rather than outdated boundaries. The flaw is political, not geographical. None of the other councils want it, which makes it a non-starter. A map that looks sensible on paper will not be implemented if every neighbour has already said no.
The next steps look more like theatre than substance. The Conservative call in will be heard at a special meeting of the Business Support and Digital Overview and Scrutiny Committee this Thursday (2 Oct). The committee can let the decision stand or send it back to Cabinet. Officers have confirmed that the move is within the budget and policy framework, which rules out escalation to full Council. If it is referred back, Cabinet has already scheduled a special meeting on Monday (6 Oct) to rubber-stamp the decision again carefully listen to opposing views and consider changing course.
The call in process is an important part of local democracy. It gives the opposition a chance to force answers and put their concerns on the record. In practice, it is largely symbolic. The Labour administration holds the votes and can overturn whatever the committee recommends.
So Medway will pay for a business case that has little chance of becoming reality. Ministers will receive a flurry of different maps in November, but the Medway version will arrive without a single other council backing it. The administration can claim it fought for what it thought was right, while the opposition can claim it tried to stop money from being wasted.
In the end, the borders that survive are the ones with backers, not the ones that make sense, and most Medway residents probably aren’t paying attention to any of this anyway.
In brief
🚨 Part of Rochester town centre was evacuated yesterday (Mon 29 Sep) after someone mistook an e-bike battery for a bomb. Kent Police sealed off an area around the High Street and Corporation Street while bomb disposal teams ensured the item posed no risk.
🏗️ Medway Council’s planning committee went on a housebuilding approval bonanza last week, approving both the 132-home Acorn Wharf scheme in Rochester and 33 new homes off Berengrave Lane in Rainham.
🗄️ A Medway provider of supported housing has received a damning report from the Care Quality Commission. An inspection of care provided by Optimum Supported Housing found that the company failed to treat people without “dignity, kindness, or respect.”
⛴️ The world’s last sea-going paddle steamer docked at Rochester’s new Limehouse Landing on Friday, marking Waverley's first visit to the town.
More Authority
We spoke to ecologist and author Carol Donaldson for our weekend interview, who has lived quite a life. She talks about her past teaching in the Arctic, rehabilitating wolves in Russia, her closer to home work restoring wetlands on the Hoo Peninsula, and lots more.
“It felt so hard to live a conventional life”
Carol Donaldson is the author of two books and has been working hard with farmers on the Hoo Peninsula to return land to wetlands. With Carol contributing to our Kent Current title, we sat down with her to discuss the work that she does, her time with wolves in Russia and why she got evicted from living in a caravan in Hoo.
Footnotes
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