UKIP has vowed to fight back against the removal of Union Jack and St George’s flags currently being flown across a south east English town by the local council.

UKIP councillors in Thurrock have said they will maintain the approximately 16 flags flying from lamp posts in the centre of town, despite the council’s insistence that they will be removed on Monday 12 December, Your Thurrock has reported.

The flags were originally installed in November by the Tim Aker Foundation in conjunction with the Nicky Mason Charity, set up in remembrance of a local fallen soldier, with the council giving permission for them to remain up during the run up to Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday.

But locals were hoping that the flags might stay as a regular feature in the town.

UKIP Cllr Tim Aker has called for locals to resist the move, commenting on Twitter: “Thurrock Council want to take down our flags. We will keep them up. Even if they take them down. Are you with us?”

His colleague, UKIP councillor Jack Duffin called for apologies from the council staff responsible for the decision, saying on Facebook: “I am embarrassed to be a councillor in Thurrock Council while we have an officer class who hate this country. Time for them to apologise or resign.”

But a local Labour party member has hit back, comparing the displaying of flags to Nazism.

In an opinion piece for a local newspaper, Labour man Mick Hall described a meeting with a local elderly lady who had expressed concern over the flags, linking them to Hitler’s dictatorship.

“She came to Britain on the Kindertransport, her parents were both German and lived in the Free City of Danzig. (now Gdańsk in Poland) In 1933, the City’s government was taken over by the local Nazi Party who expressed their patriotism to a greater Reich by hanging flags and pasting up offensive posters all over the city,” Hall said.

“She understands better than most the damage patriotics displays can do when they get in the wrong hands. Thurrock is a multi racial society, like it or not we have people living here who have come from throughout the UK and the four corners of the world. I cannot help thinking those who put those flags up in Grays and elsewhere in the borough were sticking a finger up at those people.

“This was basically what the Nazi party in Danzig were doing in the 1930s, the only real difference being their flags were aimed at the city’s Jewish population and we all know where that led…”