Raise the Colours is a far-right group active in Great Britain whose members attach flags to lampposts and engage in anti-migrant vigilantism. It is one of several organisations behind Operation Raise the Colours, which rose to public prominence in England in autumn 2025. The organisation was co-founded by Ryan Bridge and Elliott Stanley, two businessmen from Birmingham and north Worcestershire, England. Stanley has subsequently disassociated himself from the group, along with several other former members including Danny Tommo. Bridge was arrested multiple times in 2026 and has been charged with a variety of offences including racially aggravated harassment and assault.
Raise the Colours initially attached without permission Union and England flags to lampposts in Birmingham and Worcestershire, before expanding its operations further into the Midlands and southern England. Residents of areas where the group operates have experienced intimidation and aggressive behaviour from its members, with fear from non-white residents being reported. In some locations, residents have organised to take the flags down. In one Birmingham suburb, Stirchley, Raise the Colours have returned repeatedly to replace flags taken down, leading to confrontations with some locals.
In late 2025, the group made multiple visits to northern France and Paris, where its members filmed themselves harassing migrants, posting videos on social media, stating that the "indigenous white population" is being "replaced in our own country". The group were joined on some of these visits by Tommy Robinson associate Tommo. They made appeals to "firms" of British football hooligans to join them in vigilante action against migrants. Robinson has shared the groups' social media posts. In January 2026, members of the group were banned by the French interior ministry from entering the country. The group has said it "does not support violence or any unlawful activity".
In March 2026, Bridge was arrested in Oxford, on suspicion of committing racially aggravated harassment on a previous visit to put flags up in the city; he was subsequently charged with 14 alleged criminal offences, including racially aggravated harassment, threatening behaviour and assault, in relation to his actions in the city. In May, a van that local residents reported to have a Raise the Colours logo on it was involved in an incident in Stirchley in which a pedestrian had his leg broken. Two days after the incident, Bridge was arrested in London and a second man was arrested in Birmingham, both on suspicion of wounding. In May, a third member of the group, was charged with murder and grievous bodily harm with intent in relation to an incident at a bar in Lichfield. Bridge was arrested again in June 2026 at an anti-immigration protest in Brighton and subsequently charged with common assault. In July 2026, group member Ben Cullen appeared in court charged with making indecent images of children. Cullen denied the charges. The group said that Cullen "was not affiliated with Raise the Colours", though photos of him remain on the group's social media pages.
In June 2026, members of the group agreed to stop attaching flags to lampposts in Oxfordshire after Oxfordshire County Council sought an injunction against the practice at the High Court. In August 2026, Birmingham City Council applied for a similar injunction against members of the group.
Members
Founders Raise the Colours was founded by Ryan Bridge and Elliott Stanley.
Background Ryan Bridge grew up in Birmingham and has said that he comes from a working-class family. He told the BBC that his grandparents had a tea service featuring the then Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales, "adding that people waved union jacks for a royal visit to Selly Oak, and as a cub scout he walked down the high street waving the same colours".
During a GB News interview, Bridge stated "We are normal, working class Birmingham businessmen". Bridge owns a house in Blackwell, Worcestershire that is reported to be worth £600,000. According to the Birmingham Mail, "[Elliott] Stanley's home address is a leafy crescent in Bromsgrove".
In October 2025, Bridge told the BBC that members of Raise the Colours are all fans of Birmingham City F.C. Bridge is associated with the Birmingham Zulu Warriors and has previously been arrested and banned from attending matches for three years as a result of violence involving Aston Villa and Manchester United supporters. According to advocacy group Hope Not Hate, Bridge has previously spoken of his fascination with the "violent side" of football as a teenager, describing the "fucking brilliant" fights as "the best buzz in the world… better than anything".
Business activities Ryan Bridge has created a number of companies that operate in the area of compensation claims. These include Nationwide Personal Injury Specialists and UK Holiday Claims Ltd. The latter company was registered in 2016 but was dissolved two years later, with no accounts being filed. Around this time, Bridge was named by Spanish police as suspected of being involved in a scam that encouraged holidaymakers to submit false compensation claims, in return for a share of any proceeds from the claims. Messages were sent to holidaymakers using a WhatsApp group with the name UK Holiday Claims. A court instruction names Bridge amongst those who are alleged to have been involved in processing false claims of food poisoning. As of 3 October 2025, the case was awaiting trial.
Elliott Stanley is a former director of Sex Doll Official, which sold and rented out sex dolls. Stanley ran the company with his wife and teenage son from their home in Bromsgrove, but it failed during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Birmingham World, the company provided "the industry's first rental service and [its] long list of customers included bereaved men who wanted a replica of their late partners". According to The i Paper, Stanley "currently runs a tanning business".
Other members
According to Hope Not Hate, other members of the group have included "Angloid", who is described as "an 18-year-old ethnonationalist who regularly espouses the Great Replacement theory on X", and Ross Childs, "an anti-migrant activist who ran a flagging campaign in Lichfield" and "has recently become active in the British far right, performing at Tommy Robinson's Christmas carol event". Danny "Tommo" Thomas was also a member of the group before falling out with Bridge and Stanley. Mark Keating is Raise the Colours' "head of security" and Julian Joseph Keane, who the group often call "JJ" or "Elon" and who in 2025 organised protests against the use of a hotel in Sutton Coldfield as accommodation for asylum seekers, "serves mainly as RTC's driver". Other members of the group named by Hope Not Hate include Ben Cullen from Oxford, Jordan Wheatley from Stafford, and Billy Allison from Solihull. Other members who have been named include Trudy Wells and Kevin Good.
Evolution of membership In June 2026, The i Paper reported that "A number of faces that once appeared in Raise the Colours videos have disappeared from [its] broadcasts, which now primarily feature just Bridge". As well as noting that Danny Thomas had left the group, the paper reported that Bridge's co-founder, Elliott Stanley, "has not been featured in months". Former members told the paper that they had left due to the group's increasing extremism, with one saying that "I genuinely wish I had never entertained doing what we did because it hasn't worked out as we originally envisioned. It's a shame because it was something that was patriotic, but I'm even questioning what patriotism is now." The same member said that he started to become concerned when the group repeatedly put up flags in neighbourhoods where local people were opposed to them. Other former members interviewed by the paper claimed that "the group has become 'the Ryan Bridge show' and is about boosting his social media popularity", while others had become backers of Restore Britain.
The i Paper reported in June 2026 that "Bridge appears to be increasingly isolated, saying in one video that family members had told him they were glad he had been arrested and urging him to stop." The paper reports that while some previous members no longer appear in videos posted by the group on social media, "newer faces are appearing in their clips – including one man Bridge interviewed and spent time with in London and Shrewsbury, who has posted a video of himself on Instagram doing a fist-salute while holding a banner that reads 'Aryan Power' and a photo wearing a t-shirt with neo-nazi symbols, such as the Aryan Fist on."
In September 2026, the Birmingham Mail reported that co-founders Bridge and Stanley had apparently fallen out, having "a brief, hostile exchange" before a courtroom opened to consider Birmingham City Council's application for an injunction against members of the group. According to the newspaper, Stanley "said he now had nothing to do with Bridge and the Raise the Colours group and had not actively participated in its activities since February".
Political stance The group has been classified as far-right and characterised as an anti-migrant vigilante and nationalist group. The Independent named the group as amongst a number of "far-right agitators" making trips to France to harass migrants waiting to cross the Channel. Le Monde called Bridge, Stanley and Thomas "far-right activists". The advocacy group Hope Not Hate has described Raise the Colours as part of "the far-right scene".
The group has denied that it is a far-right organisation and describes itself as a "grassroots movement for unity and patriotism". In interviews with GB News, Stanley and Bridge have denied that Raise the Colours campaign is politically motivated, with Stanley describing himself as a patriot and "centrist", not "right wing". "This is nothing to do with far-right movements", the pair told GB News. Stanley has said that anyone characterising the pair's politics otherwise was "putting a target on our backs".
Bridge has stated that the British "right wing" needs to unite to oppose "the left". He has said that "We are the laughing stock of Europe and the world. We are getting more and more to be like a communist state....if you speak up or uncover the truth about the migrant situation...you are silenced."
Ryan Bridge's attendance at Reform UK conference Ryan Bridge attended the Reform UK party conference in Birmingham in September 2026, while on police bail. He told The Guardian that he was not a member of Reform UK but had been invited to attend by the party. At an event at the conference, Bridge asked Nigel Farage "I would like to roll this out with you guys at Reform, and we have a legal and lawful way where we can raise flags in Reform council areas and do it the right way... Would you be happy to read my proposal and go forward?”, to which Farage replied, "I’ll give it to our lawyers. I can’t see why it shouldn’t be legal." Farage also told Bridge, "What your campaign has done is wake up vast parts of this country. If we can help you legally, we will." Hope Not Hate said: "That someone as extreme as Ryan Bridge was inside the Reform conference with a pass is genuinely shocking". Ben Quinn and Neha Gohil subsequently wrote in The Guardian that "Reform is facing questions about explicit links to the nationalist hard right" following Bridge's role at the party's conference.
In the wake of the conference, Bridge told The Guardian that he had received significant interest from Reform councillors and that the party was considering his proposal. He told the newspaper: "Specific councils are in acknowledgment of what we are trying to roll out and propose. It’s very, very positive from Clacton to Norfolk to Wales. Last night, I spoke to councillors in Burnley, it’s literally the whole country."
Flag raising