Operation Raise the Colours is a campaign movement primarily in England, Scotland and Wales consisting of groups that display the Union Flag and/or the English, Scottish or Welsh flag in public places. The campaign began in August 2025 and aroused controversy centring on the flag of England due to its history of use by anti-immigration nationalists. The movement has involved tying flags to lampposts and painting them onto mini-roundabouts. Some members of flagging groups have engaged in anti-migrant vigilantism in northern France and on the streets of Paris. By September 2025, the movement had spread to both Scotland and Wales.
Supporters of the campaign argue that the movement aims to promote patriotism, but the campaign's supporters and organisers include figures and organisations associated with or belonging to the far-right, including the fascist political party Britain First and the anti-Islam campaigner Tommy Robinson.
Anti-racist campaign groups such as Stand Up to Racism and Hope Not Hate have expressed opposition to the movement, they argue that it is a cynical attempt by the far-right to promote their ideas, inflame tensions and intimidate immigrants, asylum seekers and other ethnic minorities at a time of rising anti-immigration sentiment in the UK. A number of different groups and individuals have claimed to have begun the movement, including the Weoley Warriors, the Raise the Colours group and Andrew Currien, the latter having alleged links to the English Defence League and Britain First according to Hope Not Hate.
Opinion polling in October 2025 showed that both white and ethnic minority adults surveyed tended to view the campaign as primarily being an expression of an anti-migrant or anti–ethnic minority message, rather than of patriotism.
Flag raising campaign
Origins in England
An online campaign called Operation Raise the Colours was founded in August 2025, calling for the public display of the Union Jack and the flags of the four nations of the United Kingdom. The stated aim of the campaign was to promote national pride and patriotism. The campaign has involved activists tying up flags on to lampposts and street furniture, as well being painted on to mini-roundabouts and zebra crossings.
One of a number of people who claims to have founded the movement is Andrew Currien, who according to the advocacy group Hope Not Hate has alleged links to the English Defence League and Britain First. Currien has thanked Britain First for donating flags to the campaign.
A number of groups associated with the campaign have emerged across the country. In Birmingham, a group called the Weoley Warriors said they were responsible for raising flags in Weoley Castle, Northfield, Bartley Green and other nearby areas. Another group, Raise the Colours, installed flags in south Birmingham and north Worcestershire. Both the Weoley Warriors and Raise the Colours also claim to be responsible for starting the national movement.
Another allied group called Flag Force UK said they were responsible for raising flags across York in Yorkshire, and has also set up a live map of flags in the region. In Worcestershire, the Wythall Flaggers launched a campaign to raise flags around Wythall.
In Greater Manchester a group called Churchill's Lions, with connections to the leadership of Britain First, said they were responsible for the majority of the flags. An investigation by a journalist at Manchester Mill found this group included co-leader of Britain First Ashlea Simon and a man who was convicted of being part of a five-person illegal immigration operation and sentenced to 20 months in prison after being stopped at the border with four migrants in his van in 2016.
Only a few weeks earlier, the Saint George's Cross had been widely flown in cities and towns across England as a show of support for the England women's national football team in the UEFA Women's Euro 2025.
In late November 2025, a man fell from a ladder while putting up flags on lampposts in South Bristol and died in hospital in early December.
Scotland and Wales By September 2025, the movement had spread to Scotland and Wales, with the Red Dragon, Saltire and Lion Rampant, the flag of Wales and the flag and royal banner of Scotland, being raised there in a similar fashion alongside the Union Jack.
In Scotland, occurrences were located in areas such as Falkirk, Maryhill and Tollcross in Glasgow, as well as Peterhead, Edinburgh, Inverness and Aberdeen. Parts of Lanarkshire were also affected.
In Glasgow, the flags were raised by a group called the Tartan Team, which are part of the Operation Raise the Colours movement. The Daily Record reported that one man organising it had made racist posts on his social media, replying to a video of an alleged fight between asylum seekers in Spain with the comment "gas them all" and also shared content claiming "the answer for America lies… in Germany with a man named Adolf". The man initially claimed mistaken identity but when pressed by a journalist, responded "Everybody is entitled to their own opinion. I understand that Hitler went nuts at the end. No wonder, the drugs do that to most people. But at the start he had good intentions. Maybe they slipped a bit but he had good intentions for his country".
In Wales, Welsh flags and Union Jacks appeared in Anglesey, Carmarthenshire, Conwy and Denbighshire. There were also incidents of the English St George's Cross appearing in Pembrokeshire, Llandudno and Cwmbran to the bemusement and protests of local residents. Wrexham County Borough Council stated that it would not be removing flags erected in Wrexham "unless they pose a health and safety hazard on our roads." The decision has attracted controversy in the area, prompting a formal complaint in June 2026 from former North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones, who described the council's position as a "whitewash". Later that month, Wales Online reported that members of Welsh nationalist organisation Mudiad Eryr Wen () had removed a Union Jack, an English flag and an Ulster loyalist banner from lampposts near Wrexham A.F.C.'s Racecourse Ground.
Legality Section 132(2) of the Highways Act 1980 states it is an offence to affix any items to structures on the public highway without permission from the relevant highways authority.
Condition of flags
By late 2025, many flags originally put up in late summer and autumn that year were reported to be in poor condition, due to the effects of the weather, with reports about the "tatty" state of flags continuing into summer 2026.
In Birmingham, the council has stated that flags attached to highways infrastructure without authorisation have in places obscured traffic control cameras and road signs.
Links with the far-right
Public organisations, journalists, political figures and academics have questioned the motives of the Raise the Colours campaign after it transpired that several far-right activists and organisations, including Britain First and senior far-right activist Tommy Robinson, had supported and promoted the campaign. Former Tommy Robinson bodyguard and far-right activist Daniel "Tommo" Thomas was a prominent member of the movement until he fell out with Raise the Colours co-founder Ryan Bridge in January 2026. Nick Ireland, the Liberal Democrat leader of Dorset Council, warned in August 2025 that the campaign had been "hijacked" by the far-right to promote their extremist agenda and said that flying flags could intimidate residents because of this alleged far-right association. The Socialist Worker also said the far-right had "co-opted" it. Guardian writer Esther Addley has written that the campaign is "an organised and well funded movement that, while certainly galvanising support among many individuals, has been driven and encouraged by figures with links to the far right". Supporters of the campaign have denied links to the far-right or any racial motivation, stating that they only wish to promote patriotism and welcome the involvement of volunteers from any political, racial or ethnic backgrounds.
Anti-racist organisation Stand Up to Racism expressed its opposition to the campaign and organised counter-protests against Raise the Colours campaigners putting up flags. The group, citing the campaign's support by Robinson and Britain First, said that it is an intentional attempt by the far-right to spread their ideas, inflame tensions and intimidate asylum seekers, immigrants, Muslims and other minority groups amid rising anti-immigration sentiment in the United Kingdom. Anti-racist group Hope not Hate have said that some of the campaign's organising had been implemented by far-right activists. Academics Dave Featherstone, Jenny Morrison and Ewan Gibbs have written that the "campaign has created a powerful visible presence for a far right whose partisans are often comparatively atomised, having been drawn to the movement through social media".
Anthropologist Dominic Bryan, who has researched the use of flags in Northern Ireland for more than 20 years, has commented on the phenomenon in Great Britain that: "We've heard predictable claims that the flags are just a display of pride in a British or English identity. This is an easy claim to make as it clearly is, in part, to do with nationalistic pride. The point is that they are being hung in particular places, by particular groups of people and in a particular way that clearly links them to the ongoing debates and hostility to migration". Historian Camilla Schofield cites Operation Raise the Colours as an example of "the contemporary global ascendancy of ethno-nationalism and the ideological capture of national symbols by fascist groups across the UK". Historian of British fascism Nigel Copsey writes that as Operation Raise the Colours established an online presence, it "prompted copycat efforts... These efforts either took the form of self-identified crews of local ‘flaggers’ or remained more ad-hoc. Whatever, they drew sustenance from the far right." Expert on far-right politics George Newth wrote that "Bearing all the hallmarks of a carefully coordinated 'astroturf' campaign (stimulating grassroots support for a cause and then using that support to legitimise other activities), raise the colours contributed to an emboldening of the far right." Oxford professor Dan Hicks called Operation Raise the Colours a "far-right astroturf (that is, fake grassroots) campaign" that was "transforming a flag into a racist, nativist symbol that marks territory as a protest against immigration".
Sociologists Rohanna Bell and Tahir Abbas wrote that Operation Raise the Colours "presents itself as a grassroots civic initiative, although its organisational core comprises individuals with documented links to the British far-right" and described it as "one local instance of a wider European pattern in which far-right infrastructures have shifted from spectacular protest into the durable production of everyday environment".
On social media, the Weoley Warriers have shared photographs taken by a member of the group at the Unite the Kingdom march organised by Tommy Robinson in London and shared posts by Polish far-right MEP Dominik Tarczyński, who also attended the march. According to Searchlight, Britain First leader Paul Golding spoke at an event on 15 November organised by a flagging group in Kent. Photographs published by Searchlight showed him drinking in a pub with two local flagging organisers. In Wolverhampton on the same date, a Patriotic Alternative banner was displayed directly in front of a large "Raise the Colours" flag at a protest.