It's just a week before Guy Fawkes night and at a table by the entrance to Taggs Coffee Shop in Hoo, three veteran campaigners are gathered around a map.

Outside, a sunny morning is being threatened by gathering dark clouds and it's fair to say there's a conspiratorial air about the meeting.

The Kent flag is flying over Hoo as rebels plot to break away from Medway Council

They've got more than a map too - it's something hidden in the pocket of army veteran and Hoo Parish Councillor Brian Styles.

But this hidden weapon isn't going to damage any government offices of institutions - except metaphorically perhaps.

It's a flag - the flag of Kent - and it's the same flag that's flying over Hoo Village Institute, just a stones throw down the road, in defiance of Medway Council plans to build 12,000 homes on the Peninsula, backed with £170million from the national Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF).

To put it plainly, a growing number of people in Hoo believe they'd be better off breaking away from Medway Council and joining Kent County Council - and the flags popping up around the Peninsula's villages are designed to send a clear message.

"It's a bit like Pirates of Pimlico," says George Crozer, High Halstow Parish Council chairman and chairman of Deangate Community Partnership and long-standing campaigner against development on the Hoo Peninsula.

"We don't think it's fair - the way the Local Plan is being produced isn't fair. They should look at all the places that are available to build on and assess those places. What they've done is decide they can solve this problem by putting 12,000 houses on the Peninsula. There's this NIMBY attitude from Medway Council.

He adds: "It's almost as if someone has sat down in Gun Wharf and said 'what's the most protected area in Medway? Let's build there. We're not only the most protected area in Medway, we're the most ecologically protected area in South East England.

"We're in the situation where we've got sufficient business rates to stand alone as a borough council. What we've said is we would be better off under Kent."

As a member of Friends of North Kent Marshes, George is something of veteran in his own right - an eco warrior who has helped save marshland and battle plans to build airports, and knows how to handle himself on the field of a planning battle better than most.

He's got the 'Pirates of Pimlico' reference wrong though. He means Passport to Pimlico, as Peninsula ward councillor later Ron Sands corrects him, and it's a film that Ron's hearing more and more references to, with Peninsula residents joking about declaring independence like the residents of Pimlico in the 1949 comedy.

And yet, Pirates of Pimlico has got a good ring to it, and maybe a piratical theme is apt enough for these revolutionaries on a peninsula surrounded by sea and estuary.

Ron - another British army veteran - moves a tattooed arm over his map.

"The people on the Peninsula are getting angry," he says. "There are people on the Peninsula that have said let's block the Ratcliffe Highway.

"A lot of people are talking about leaving Medway. It's a growing campaign. There are six of seven parish councils on the Peninsula, plus Cliffe, that have voted no confidence in Medway Council."

Ron explained he'd had an uneasy feeling about the council leadership's attitude towards his home from the moment he was first elected, when the new councillors were given a tour of Medway.

"As we were coming back down I said 'are we going to the Peninsula now?'" he recalled. "They said 'no, we haven't got time for that'."

Since then he says the groundswell of anti-Medway feeling surged in Hoo when the council closed Deangate Ridge golf club, with many feeling the council had run the community asset into the ground before closing it.

With a backlog of developers now queuing up to aim planning applications at the area - Medway Council's proposal to build almost half its 27,000 planned new homes on the Peninsula did nothing to win the hearts of residents.

Then earlier this month a vote on the council's planning blueprint was pulled at the last minute following a backlash among councillors, who said the plan was "incomplete and flawed" - which led to former Cllr Rupert Turpin being sacked from his cabinet position.

Back in Taggs Coffee Shop, Ron explains that opposition from within Conservative leadership's own ranks had given a boost to the would-be revolutionaries out in the marshes.

At which point, as if to prove his point, the group is joined by Hoo resident Chris Grace, who's on his way out after a cup of coffee. Would he prefer to be under KCC?

"Yes, Medway's useless," he offers immediately. "Why can't they build at Capstone Valley? They said 2,000 houses would put too much pressure on Medway hospital. What about 12,000 here? I just find it incredible. It's like a police state. The man on the street has got no rights. You'd have more rights with Putin.

"Kelly Tolhurst MP seems to be on our side," he adds. "She has said why should she have all the development in her constituency when there are two others. We should do what they did on the Isle of Dogs - pull up the bridge and declared independence."

Clearly there's support for the principle of breaking away, but how it would be achieved is not yet clear, although George admits they'll need more than flags.

"I don't know how we could do it," he says. "There would have to be some sort of referendum, and it would take time.

"People want to protest, but where does protesting get us? What might get us somewhere is legal action, and that's what we're looking at at the moment."

In other words, any revolutionaries watching shouldn't expect much in the way of gunpowder or treason, but there will be plot by the barrel-load.

Ron agrees, but for him the legal arguments that might end up being crucial, are less important than the lives of residents themselves and their passion for their home.

"They're saying Hoo isn't a village any more, it's going to be a town," he said. "They haven't asked the villagers about that. This village was in the Domesday Book - there's a lot of history that they're quite happy to sacrifice on the altar of gorging on housing.

"I'm the son of a farm labourer and I was saying to my daughter I can walk on the same bits of earth that my father did. Now that's going and it's just tragic."

Except this tragedy isn't quite over yet, and there's still time for a happy ending - perhaps with a touch of farce along the way.

"Someone text me just this morning saying let's declare independence," laughs Ron. "If we do that you'll have to throw sandwiches over the barrier.

"If we we bring the in passports in, you can have a day pass."

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