Kent Police rebrand lawbreaking as free speech

Plus the latest happenings at KCC, news in brief, and more

It’s been a weird week of flags going up across the county, which has led to some awkward political positions. While Reform-led KCC tried to encourage people not to hang flags from lampposts this week, Kent Police made it equally clear that it was absolutely fine and they wouldn’t arrest anyone even if they were breaking the law. We dig into the full details below. Further down, we have the latest happenings at KCC, news in brief, and more.

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Kent Police rebrand lawbreaking as free speech

When is breaking the law not breaking the law? When Kent Police decide so, apparently.

This week has been dominated by flags, after a campaign led by far-right agitators gained national traction.

Under the name ‘Operation Raise the Colours,’ flags have been erected on lampposts and other public spaces across the country, with Kent seeing large amounts in areas like Medway, Canterbury, Faversham, and Dartford.

Flags and their usage can be an emotive subject, with many wishing to fly them as a symbol of pride in their country. In contrast, others see them as being usurped by the far-right, with their placement representing the sort of uncomfortable ethno-nationalism that previously appeared to be in the past.

Like many campaigns that rapidly gain traction on social media, politicians across Kent have struggled to figure out how to respond.

Kent County Council’s Reform leader Linden Kemkaran initially took to social media to confirm that KCC “will not be removing any of these flags put up unilaterally by the people of Kent.”

We asked KCC’s press office whether Cllr Kemkaran’s post represented council policy, and whether KCC would accept any liability for any injuries or accidents that came from flags left up on lampposts. As is the standard at this point, we have received no response to our query.

After a week of flags being attached to highway infrastructure, KCC suddenly took a more nuanced tone, saying that flags would remain for now but encouraging residents not to scale lampposts to erect them. The council also clarified that they will remove anything that risks people’s safety, like flags blocking CCTV cameras or road signage, before suggesting they’d report anyone caught putting a flag on the highway to the police.

It turns out this would be a rather pointless exercise, though, as Kent Police appear to have taken a position that putting up flags wherever you like is absolutely fine, whatever the law might say.

A statement from Kent Police on BBC Radio Kent yesterday morning said:

“Kent Police is aware of a number of instances where the Union Flag and St George’s Cross have been spontaneously flown in public spaces around the county in recent days.

Flying the nation’s flags is always lawful. Furthermore, they are a unifying symbol of national identity and pride for many, and their presence will not be viewed as an expression of hostility or in support of any political cause or issue.

Officers will not be arresting anyone or removing the Union Flag or St George’s Cross without a need to do so for urgent public safety reasons, such as endangering traffic.

Kent Police’s role is to protect and serve the people of Kent and this includes not infringing on people’s rights to freedom of speech.”

There’s a lot to unpack there.

Taking aside that the campaign to erect flags has been entirely driven by the same people who are protesting outside of asylum seeker hotels and marching to ‘stop the boats’ not being viewed as a political action, the statement still raises several questions.

First, the claim that flying flags is “always lawful.” This would appear to contradict both the statement put out by KCC’s Reform administration above and Section 132 of the Highways Act 1980, which states:

A person who, without either the consent of the highway authority for the highway in question or an authorisation given by or under an enactment or a reasonable excuse, paints or otherwise inscribes or affixes any picture, letter, sign or other mark upon the surface of a highway or upon any tree, structure or works on or in a highway is guilty of an offence…

As a result, it would appear that despite attaching flags to lampposts being an offence in law, it is something that Kent Police are explicitly choosing not to enforce. That sets a precedent that if one law can be waved aside on the grounds of symbolism, what happens the next time campaigners decide to ‘spontaneously’ hang banners, slogans, or something less palatable than a national flag?

Further, Kent Police states that their role is 'not infringing on people's rights to freedom of speech.' Does this mean Kent Police will take no action against anything spontaneously displayed in a public space, even if in contravention of the law above? Is this exception only for those flying national flags, or are other flags, symbols, banners, or posters also acceptable? The message is muddy at best, and seems in contrast with an incident earlier this summer when armed Kent Police officers threatened to arrest a woman in Canterbury for having the temerity to support Palestine in public.

Finally, the statement focuses entirely on flags and doesn’t mention the extensive graffiti of England flags onto roundabouts and road markings in recent days, which is presumably also an offence. Will Kent Police turn a blind eye to this kind of ‘freedom of speech’ too?

We put all of these questions to Kent Police’s press team. We received no response.

While Kent County Council seem happy to try and walk a delicate line between pragmatism and not annoying the people putting up the flags, Medway Council seem to be taking a rather blunter stance.

Cllr Alex Paterson, Portfolio Holder for Community Safety, Highways and Enforcement, told us:

“Anyone who believes flying a flag is always an innocent act of pride has clearly never been in Glasgow when an Old Firm match or Orange Walk is taking place. I have, so let’s not be naive. I’m all for claiming back the symbolism of our country’s flag from bigots, but the best way to do that is probably not to participate in a craze started by far-right agitators, and then to turn a blind eye when a significant number involved state it is a ‘message’ to immigrants. At a time when elected Kent councillors are happy to be pictured next to the banner of a neo-nazi group we shouldn’t shy away from calling that out, and in being wise to the motives of those who wrap themselves in the fabric of our flag while tearing apart the fabric of our nation.”

It does feel somewhat disengenuous for Kent Police to claim that the ongoing campaign won’t be viewed as an expression of hostility or in support of a political cause when Dartford Borough Council are having to take to social media to beg people not to paint England flags on children’s playgrounds alongside racial slurs.

Graffiti in Dartford. Photo: Dartford Borough Council

Whatever the intentions of those joining in, the campaign’s architects know exactly what they are doing. Kent Police’s decision not to enforce the law has handed them a victory they could not have achieved alone. If breaking the law now counts as free speech, then it seems the only condition is that you do it with the right colours stitched to the fabric.

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What is happening at KCC this week?

• Despite all the song and dance about Reform sending their DOGE team into Kent County Council in June and the amount of outrageous spending they had supposedly found, the reality is somewhat different. A Freedom of Information request put to Kent County Council recently revealed that the council shared no data with the Reform DOGE team other than that which was already publicly available. Reform’s crack team of the best and the brightest travelled to County Hall and were only shown things that were freely available anyway, despite threats toward staff that they would face misconduct claims if they refused to co-operate.

• Kent County Council reduced their debt by 5% between 2023/24 and 2024/25. Just the trivial matter of the remaining £733m to go.

• Following the High Court ruling on the hotel housing asylum seekers in Epping, KCC leader Linden Kemkaran requested information from district council leaders on the hotels in their areas and asked them to consider taking the same kind of legal action that Epping did. This presumably didn’t go over well, with the Green leader of Maidstone and the Conservative leaders of Dartford and Sevenoaks making it clear that they wouldn’t comply.

• We’ll have more on this next week, but KCC held a meeting on violence against women and girls this week, where one speaker claimed ‘hundreds of thousands of young women’ had been murdered by migrants.

• Daniel Taylor, the suspended Reform councillor for Cliftonville, appeared in court last week after being accused of making threats to kill his wife. The trial is set to take place at the Crown Court in May next year. Remarkably, the charge was updated to cover alleged actions up until 2 July, nearly a month after he was initially arrested.

• It’s been over a week since we revealed that five Kent Reform councillors posed smiling for photographs alongside a man draped in a neo-Nazi flag. In the time since, Reform have refused to acknowledge the incident, with no response coming from the national party, the leadership in Kent, or the five councillors themselves. No other outlets have picked up the incident, with the exception of the Byline Times, which identified the flag-draped man in question.

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In brief

🔊 Staff working at the Manston asylum centre have spoken about the inhumane conditions and abuse asylum seekers are subjected to when they arrive there for processing.

🚒 A £450,000 drone used to scour the English Channel for migrants somehow caught fire on the M20 near Folkestone.

🕷️ Michael Dnes has been digging into whether a rare type of spider really did derail the town centre plans for Ebbsfleet and finds a reality that’s even more silly.

🏗️ Plans for a 5,000-home development near Lenham will take nearly 30 years to deliver.

💸 Levels of debt at Kent’s district councils vary dramatically across the county. Ashford carries a debt of £261m, followed by Canterbury on £183m. Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge & Malling have none at the other end of the scale.

💷 Households in Folkestone and Hythe owe £6.7m in council tax, with the authority taking enforcement action using bailiffs against 1,446 households this year, data obtained by the Folkestone Dispatch reveals.

🏚️ Thanet District Council are considering a selective licensing scheme that would apply to over 12,500 homes in Margate and Ramsgate in an effort to improve standards within privately rented properties.

🪧 Protestors gathered outside of Sittingbourne’s greyhound racing stadium last week as part of an effort to ban the activity. Sittingbourne has one of just 17 dog racing stadiums left in the country.

🗳️ A by-election will be held in Rolvenden & Tenterden West for a vacant Ashford Borough Council seat on 25 September. If you wish to stand, you have until tomorrow to get your nomination papers in.

🪵 Fergus Wilson, Ashford’s own Scrooge minus the redemption, is offering to sell some woodland he chopped down to Maidstone Borough Council for £4m to be used as a traveller site.

🚄 Restoring Eurostar services to Ashford could inject £2.7bn into the local economy over five years.

🚆 ianVisits came to explore Southeastern’s open day at their Ashford depot on Sunday.

🛍️ Three Kent Poundland stores are set to close following a restructuring deal to keep the company from falling into administration. Shops in Canterbury, Tunbridge Wells, and Rainham will cease trading on Sunday.

🚗 Dartford Crossing charges will increase on Monday, with the cost for a single crossing in a car increasing to £3.50 or £2.80 for pre-pay account holders.

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More Currents

For our latest big interview, we sat down with Tim Aker, former Member of the European Parliament and Development Manager for the Federation of Small Businesses in Kent. We talk to him about his electoral journey, going from MEP to FSB, his book, and more.

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