I’m Sick of “Raise the Colours Flaggers” – Why It’s Time Birmingham Stopped Them
Another day, another Facebook livestream from Ryan Bridge, leader of West Midlands-based Raise the Colours, mining a seam of money and influence among patriots by putting up flags across our city without permission.
He pops up on my work feeds with frequency, usually modelling his own merchandise, as he tours with his crew, peddling a simplistic worldview with Union flags and the Cross of St George as his calling card.
He’s back in Stirchley, one of his favourite stomping grounds, baiting the ‘lefties’ and ‘woke’ locals who object to Union flags lining their streets.
Bridge shrugs off concerns from residents who say the displays feel divisive, including healthcare staff who have described driving into flagged areas of the city as 'intimidating'.
It’s all harmless, he insists. Only ‘lefties’ read anything more into it, and they can all do one, is Bridge's message.
A passing car beeps. “Another patriot,” he grins, waving.
His crew get to work: Elon in the van, Matty up in the cherry picker, swapping a faded poppy for a fresh Union flag and St George’s Cross. Bridge beams as the red, white and blue flutters in the night sky. “Beautiful. Unbelievable,” he tells his viewers.
Later that night, another group arrives to cut the flags down.
The cycle of installation, confrontation and removal is becoming familiar. InMoseley earlier this year, Bridge’s group greeted Lib Dem councillor Izzy Knowles with jeers when she asked them to leave.
West Midlands Police officers have been filmed standing back as Bridge and his crew mount pavements, hold up traffic and hoist up their cherry picker, intervening only to prevent potential disorder when angry residents approach. Bridge films it all, posting critics’ faces online, where his followers ridicule them as lunatics.
He’s also a regular outside hotels housing asylum seekers, here and around the country, framing his campaign as ‘protecting women and children’.
Outside one venue, an exchange with a West Midlands Police officer is caught on camera - she urges him to put up 'the bigger flag', 'I like that one,' she tells him.
The police say they are hands off because Bridge and co are not 'committing a crime'. Birmingham City Council have also claimed they are powerless to intervene. Elsewhere, there has been action, but not without consequence.
In Oxfordshire, the Liberal Democrat-led county council issued a legal notice ordering Raise the Colours to stop, warning further steps if they refused.
Its leader, Liz Leffman, was blunt: this is not patriotism but “intimidation and division” causing real harm.
The authorities in Shropshire have equally attempted to stand against the flags phenomenon, with pro and anti flaggers voicing their differing views in increasingly aggressive online and in person encounters.
In Birmingham, the flags have been quietly removed by the council under cover of darkness to try to avoid confrontations. Local Conservatives and Reform figures have positively welcomed the displays.
It's caused a quandary for Labour politicians at local and national level. They have been largely ambivalent to date, speaking only of the health and safety implications and referring to the flags as unauthorised attachments. Mostly they have ended up in verbal knots desperately trying not to equate flagging with racism, as some suggest.
Bridge himself claims he’s “not political”.
Yet he has appeared at Tommy Robinson-fronted ‘Unite the Kingdom’ events, been banned from France after confrontations with migrants and charity workers, and even travelled to Afghanistan to downplay Taliban rule as “not that bad” while admitting “it’s dangerous here” as gunfire sounded overhead.
Showing his ignorance of what Taliban rule means for women, girls and anyone else who fails to conform to their narrow worldview, Bridge filmed himself describing law and order in Afghanistan as 'second to none' and 'perfect'. He described how "you cannot go anywhere without the say so of the Tallies...you cannot move from one end of a town to another without a check point".
He repeated his view that the only Afghanis fleeing the country are 'the sh*t of this country and the deserters...Yes, you're in serious trouble if you break the law here... but people who leave here want to come (to the UK) for financial benefit and because they are wrong uns in this country.
"It is nothing to do with fleeing the Taliban. If you play by the rules here you can have a nice house, nice standard of life...'
His broadcasts are given lots of airtime on GB News. He is backed by tens of thousands of followers, many of them happy to shell out money to subscribe to his channel or give donations to fund his broadcasts, including disenchanted Brummies who declare him a hero.
It would be utterly naive to ignore his appeal. Many in this city and the country are angry about the economy, broken public services and the cost of living, and Bridge and his ilk offer a simple answer: stop migration and things improve.
His campaign centres on 'stopping the boats' and a mantra that every asylum seeker is a potential rapist, a drain on the nation and a danger. But there is a cost to that rhetoric that Bridge refuses to acknowledge his part in.
Across Birmingham, people talk more openly than for decades in racist terms. The tone has shifted and it's being felt in our workplaces, playgrounds and in communities.
Racist comments that should have been consigned to history are back. Online and on the street, people with brown or black skin find themselves reduced to a label - “migrant”, “illegal” - regardless of who they are, where they were born, or how long they’ve called this city home.
The flags that are flown are not neutral symbols. They are the flags of our nation, proudly flown at moments of heightened national pride - but used by Bridge and his allies, they are markers about who belongs, and who does not.
That is why so many Brummies are pushing back and pressing for unity over division, and resist the racist and particularly Islamophobic undercurrent.
Residents who challenge the flaggers describe intimidation and abuse. One woman was branded a ‘traitor’ outside her own home. Others speak of repeated harassment as flags are reinstalled again and again.
Salma, from Moseley, questions who is really behind the campaign. “They claim it’s patriotic but what I see is division, not inclusion. The majority of Brummies are kind, compassionate and welcoming. We don’t want hatefulness to take over our home.”
Josie, from Cotteridge, is blunter: “I live here and I’m f***** sick of this. They keep coming back, putting the same flag up outside my house again and again.”
Laurence, from Stirchley, points to the wider pattern: flags going up without permission, by people who don’t live locally, accompanied by hostility towards anyone who challenges them.
Others speak of what the symbolism has become. “We all know what these flags are being used to signal,” one resident wrote. “Don’t dress it up as pride — this is about intimidation.”
And for some, the feeling runs deeper still. “I shudder every time I go shopping,” another said. “It’s wrong to use my flag to make me feel like that.
"Do not allow their dogwhistle arguments about being 'proud to be British', this is about intimidation and racism."
It’s time the council, the police and our city acted to say no.
UPDATED: Ryan Bridge and Raise the Colours challenge some of the opinions expressed in this opinion article.