Harry Hilden spent last weekend on a tour of northern England, demonstrating in Manchester and mouthing off in Leeds, with his associate Dean Phillpott in tow.
That he had only recently returned from a holiday in Spain was apparent from his complexion.
That it had done him no good whatsoever was apparent from everything else.
On Saturday, Hilden was in Manchester for the Britain First demonstration, where he spoke – or rather attempted to speak. Police had confiscated the sound system, and noisy anti-fascists ensured that whatever he had to say was largely inaudible.
Crude response
Sunday brought an unscripted encounter in Leeds, where Hilden’s path crossed with a demonstration by Iranian monarchists carrying Israeli flags.
His response, posted on his Facebook feed, was characteristically crude: “a load of fuckin’ middle easterners … deport them all.”
Throughout the weekend, Hilden was accompanied by his known associate Dean Phillpott, a doyen of the Bexley flaggers and a man with a notably colourful past.
Phillpott — who now styles himself “Bexley Borough flag man” on social media and has joined the growing tide of unsavoury elements attaching themselves to Restore Britain — is based in Erith, in the London Borough of Bexley, where Hilden himself lived for a time.
Knife attack
As Searchlight reported in December, Phillpott is certainly a piece of work. In 2005, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his part in a mob-handed knife attack on two men in Abbey Wood.
In 2020, he received five years for possession of a prohibited firearm and drugs, after police on a surveillance operation watched him take delivery of a revolver. He also ran DP Waste Management & Recycling Ltd from 2023 until it was struck off the companies register in 2024.
Hilden’s attention is now fixed on his forthcoming demonstration in Maidstone this Saturday, 25 April. Framed originally as a “March for Kent” on ostensibly anti-housebuilding grounds, it has since been rebadged as a St George’s Day event, despite St George’s Day falling on 23 April.
Growing opposition
Hilden has called on “all patriots across Kent, even south London and other local areas” to attend. Phillpott is pushing the march on X/Twitter, and Folkestone “auditor” Alfie Goodey has been promoting it on YouTube.
Opposition is building however, and a counter-mobilisation is under way.
