One year on from the riots, what can Kent tell us about the state of the UK?

“What’s the best thing about Chatham?” Daz leans back on his workbench and laughs. “The road out of it.” 

The 50-year-old small business owner is joking, he clarifies. But the self-described “disillusioned citizen” is bemused by Big Issue’s presence in his riverside town, especially on a 30° day. 

“It’s sunny, it’s beautiful, go somewhere nice!” he urges. “What in god’s name are you doing here?” 

There are, in fact, plenty of reasons to visit Chatham. This small town on the banks of the river Medway boasts a rich history: beloved by Charles Dickens, home to the Royal Navy Dockyards for four centuries, launching point for Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson’s HMS Victory. 

But this storied past is not why Big Issue is here. Last year, the town was among those swept up in anti-immigration protests. One year on, we are on the streets of Chatham to speak to locals – and to understand how those tensions are still playing out.  

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Last year’s unrest 

Medway council leader Vince Maple wants to clear something up. 

Last year’s riots – sparked by the tragic murder of three young girls in Southport, and the racialised misinformation that spread in its aftermath – were “absolutely disgraceful”. But there were no riots in Chatham. 

“In many places across the country… It was looting,” the Labour and Co-operative councillor says. “You know, stealing from Greggs is not a political statement,” he tells Big Issue.

“But that is not what we saw here in Medway.” 

Towns from the south coast to the north-west saw angry crowds, arrests and smashed shopfronts. The violence sent shockwaves across the country; just weeks into office, the new prime minister Keir Starmer slammed its perpetrators as “right-wing thugs”. 

“Be in no doubt: those who have participated in this violence will face the full force of the law,” he warned.  

Chatham’s protests were more subdued, Maple says. On the evening of 7 August, approximately 150 protesters gathered outside a local immigration lawyer’s office, trading chants with 50 counter-protesters. 

“There were very few Medway people involved, on either side,” Maple adds. “I suspect in some cases, it will be the same individuals who would have been in Dover – they get a lot of protests down there, because of the geography – that would have come up to the outskirts of Medway.” 

Police made three arrests; the rest of the protesters dispersed peacefully. 

Though Medway avoided the violent scenes witnessed elsewhere, the same undercurrents – mistrust in institutions and rising anti-immigrant sentiment – are now reshaping the region’s political landscape. 

In the 2025 local elections, Reform UK won Kent County Council in a landslide, ending almost 30 years of Conservative rule. 

Medway – geographically situated in Kent – is its own unitary authority, home to Chatham, Rochester and the three other Medway towns. It didn’t hold elections in 2025 – but Reform has won two out of three by-elections in the area. 

“Look, Medway is not, somehow very, very different [to the rest of Kent],” Maple says. 

“We held Gillingham but lost the two [seats] in Rochester to Reform. Only just – by a handful of votes. 

“If 12 people had voted differently, we’d have won. But you know, that’s democracy.” 

Reform gained council seats across England and overtook the Conservatives in several former heartlands. Nationally, several polls currently put them on a 34% vote share – up to nine points ahead of Labour. 

Frustration with the status quo, Maple says, is a contributing factor to this political shift. 

“Change takes time. People say, ‘I’m never voting Conservative again,’ and they’re unhappy with Labour too. So, they look elsewhere.” 

“Previously that person might have gone to the Lib Dems… now it’s: ‘I don’t want the two main parties – who else can win?’ It’s Reform.” 

Both of Medway’s new Reform councillors declined to speak to Big Issue. But on the street, several people we approached expressed support for the far-right party. 

Patricia and Carole, two pensioners, had previously voted both Labour and Conservative. Now, they’re Reform UK supporters. 

“I’m sorry, but that’s what I would do,” Carole, 77, says. “What gets us is all these boats that keep coming over. How can we afford all these people coming in and paying them benefits?” 

Asylum seekers have no recourse to public funds or benefits and instead receive minimal financial support of £49.18 per week, well below the poverty line. Yet they continue to be targeted, most recently in Epping, when more than 1,000 people gathered outside an asylum hotel, resulting in six arrests after violence erupted and bottles and flares were thrown.

Here in Chatham, Scott – a roofer on a smoke break – echoes the discredited claim that asylum seekers receive benefits. Chatham is “total crap”, the 28-year-old tells Big Issue, and if he could, he’d “get rid of all the foreigners”. 

“Labour, Crap. Everything’s crap. The whole world is messed up,” he says. “And these derelict buildings, they could give to the homeless. Veterans, stuff like that.” 

Read more:

• When the world seems polarised, volunteering has a way of unifying people and rebuilding hope
• How Britain’s high street decline is fuelling Reform UK’s rise: ‘There’s a sense that politics has failed’
• Closure of pubs and parks created a ‘tinderbox’ for far-right riots, research says: ‘Hate can fill the void’

The high street 

In the blazing morning sunshine, Chatham High Street is pleasant; shoppers meander and sip coffees from outside tables. But there are indeed several derelict buildings and several people who appear to be sleeping rough. 

Medway is characterised by extremes. Thirty of its 163 neighbourhoods are among the most deprived in England, while 25 rank among the most affluent. 

In Chatham the average male life expectancy is 73.4 years. Just four miles away in Cuxton, men can expect to live a decade longer. 

The high street vacancy rate is similarly uneven; At roughly 12%, Chatham’s high street vacancy rate is several points higher than Rochester, a short walk up the road. 

Visible deprivation is a boon for populist parties like Reform UK. 

“It’s the bit of the economy that’s obvious to people,” says Prashant Garg, an academic at Imperial College London. “Perhaps as an economist, I may see [GDP stats] a lot, but people on the street… what they see is what’s on the street.” 

Chatham isn’t alone. Across the UK, hundreds of town centres have been hollowed out by years of austerity, online shopping and rising business costs. Community assets like libraries and youth centres have closed. 

For many voters, this creates a kind of ambient political despair. “There is a sense that politics has failed us,” Garg says, “and you’re reminded of that every time you see a pothole, or a boarded-up shop.” 

Garg recently published new research supporting this link. Analysing data on 83,000 empty high street units across 197 towns in England and Wales, his team found that visible economic decay, not abstract economic indicators, drives support for populist parties. “So when things are visibly bad… we find that every percentage point of these vacancies leads to roughly 0.2% of UKIP – or now Reform – support.” 

While his study focuses on the period between 2010 and 2019, Garg believes its conclusions still apply. “Populism is constant,” he adds. 

It’s not necessarily actual poverty that triggers this reaction – it’s the optics of decline. In Chatham, this correlation appears to ring true. 

“It’s just foreign shops and barbers, and they closed all the lovely shops. Marks & Spencer and Littlewoods and that sort of era,” Carole says. 

Patricia chips in: “We used to have some lovely shops. We was born in the right age, weren’t we? Now, if they’re not boarded up, they’re barbers or nail technicians, or you know, vapes. Nothing’s good now.” 

The dockyard 

Not everyone is a Reform voter; several locals who speak to Big Issue are dismayed by the rise of the far-right party.  

“I’m very sorry that we’ve reached a point where a right-wing group like that have purchase,” says Sarah Fowler, a 71-year-old retiree.

“It’s very worrying.” 

Desiree Nurse – owner of Cleopatra’s Legacy on Chatham High Street – says that media negativity skews the influence of the far right. 

Chatham has an “amazing community”, she adds, and immigrants are an essential part of it. 

“Yes, being on the forefront of the high street, you get all the different sort of biases and prejudices and all these different issues,” she tells Big Issue. 

“And I also see the other aspect of it, because all the international staff, the teachers, and the nurses and the doctors, come in here too. They are making such a positive contribution. 

“The media highlights the ones coming in and taking all the so-called jobs… but nobody’s focusing on the real contributions.” 

Still, even among those who reject the far right, there’s a shared recognition that Chatham faces deep-rooted challenges. To understand the town’s problems, Daz tells me, you need to understand the dockyard’s closure. 

“It’s a remnant of a failed dockyard,” says Daz. “Thatcher killed us, basically. Half the kids in my class – none of their dads worked. Then they didn’t work. Now their kids aren’t working. Basically there’s nothing to replace it. Nothing to replace it at all.” 

The Royal Navy’s Chatham Dockyard shut in March 1984. More than 7,000 skilled shipbuilding workers lost their jobs overnight, along with 10,000 employees in supporting industries. Local unemployment spiked to nearly 24%. Though the site has since been reinvented – now operating as a
heritage hub, business campus, and filming location – locals say that the town “never really recovered”. 

“We’ve never really managed to reinvent ourselves,” Fowler says. 

“It wasn’t just the dockyard; it was all the ancillary businesses too.” Fowler’s friend, 63-year-old roofer Christopher Griffin, nods. “It hit the factories, engineering – everything… the private shipbuilders stayed on for a few years doing repairs, but after that it all dried up.” 

It’s a familiar story across the UK, where deindustrialisation casts a long shadow. Manufacturing employment fell from 7.1 million in 1979 to 4.5 million by 1992 – a loss of over a third in just over a decade. Ill health and economic inactivity remain concentrated in the UK’s post-industrial and coastal communities. 

According to a 2024 report by the Learning and Work Institute, just 20 local authorities – former industrial and seaside towns – account for 10% of all people in the UK who are economically inactive due to long-term sickness, despite containing only 4% of the working-age population. 

“There’s a lot of poverty here in Chatham,” says Sophie, a former prison officer. “It’s very visible.” 

“This is the first time I’ve been down here [to the high street] for a year… I’ve never felt uncomfortable coming to Chatham before, but I feel on edge being here today. The amount of people down here making noise – just drinking and making noise.” 

Mr Kaysingh – the owner of First Choice shoe shop, where Sophie used to get her school boots – chips in. “9am, men were sitting there, just drinking cans of beer.” 

Sophie shakes her head. It’s all too easy to “fall through the cracks”, she adds. 

“I think poverty is a huge thing. I think everyone’s struggling. You know, my husband works and has a very good job, and even we’re one pay cheque away from losing everything.” 

Jayden, 17, and Noah, 18 – both college students studying childcare – are sitting on the pier during their lunch break. They agree that Chatham feels “very unsupervised”. 

“It’s a bit run down, because of the people who are here… There’s too much like drug abuse, especially from, like, homeless people.” 

Recovery? 

Vince Maple doesn’t sugar-coat it: “We’ve had some challenges over the last 12 months.” 

“There’s been a small increase in antisocial behaviour that’s definitely been clear to me,” he tells Big Issue. “But there’s a collective determination to try and tackle that.” 

He gestures outside, where half a dozen people are sitting at cafe tables. 

“Most people who are coming here this morning have chosen to. They could have stayed at home, but they’ve chosen to come down, grab a coffee, pop into one of the shops.” 

The Medway Council is undeniably working hard to improve the town centre. Maple rattles off a couple of its initiatives: the opening of a “fantastic” new co-working space, a new NHS healthy living centre, greening initiatives and plans to make the town a business improvement district. 

A hoarding around a regeneration project reads: “The past is the seed, the future is the tree,” a quote from a local school child.  

That’s the ethos driving the town’s renewal, Maple says. “We’re using all the different tools and techniques to say keep coming here.” 

Likewise, various local organisations are fighting hard to regenerate local spaces. Just up the road, the Intra Community Trust is turning derelict buildings into community spaces. But there’s only so much a local council can do. 

Across the country, the continued cost of living crisis, polarisation and deepening regional inequalities are helping drive support for Reform – particularly in areas where decline feels personal and politics seems absent. 

For some, the response isn’t to back a new party – it’s to stop believing that politics matters at all. Crystal, 18, a sixth-form student at a nearby college, “just wants to get out of Chatham”. She couldn’t vote in the last election, but she wouldn’t have anyway. 

“Doesn’t make a difference,” she says. “I don’t believe anything that any of them say.”  

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