It is Saturday morning and 14-year-old Jonathan Wood is taking a break from canvassing for Ukip in Rochester High Street. He finished his maths homework late the night before so he could dedicate his weekend to campaigning for Tory defector Mark Reckless.

“A moment ago someone said I was a member of the Nazi party,” says Wood as he sits on a stool in a former crystal healing shop and centre for Wiccan worship currently being used as the Ukip headquarters in this month’s byelection.

“I was nine when we had a Ukip leaflet come through our front door,” recalls Wood. “But my interest came during the coalition, when I disagreed with certain policies. Ukip was the first party that came to mind.”

It’s easy to see how Wood, an articulate first-generation “kipper” and son of a Baptist minister, might quickly be cultivated as a young pinup for the Ukip press machine. He already has his own business, Eagle Travel, designed to stop people “getting ripped off on their holiday”. He claims to offer more competitive prices than Thomson or Thomas Cook. Over the past few months he has already made a profit of £450 – slightly better than the average pay packet of a paperboy.

But this isn’t unique: a 16-year-old William Hague was paraded in front of the Conservatives’ 1977 conference. And in 2011 Rory Weal, also 16, became the star of the Labour conference after his attack on the coalition. What is different is that, for the first time, thousands of young people in classrooms, universities and workplaces are looking for an alternative to the politics that have alienated them.

While membership of Ukip’s youth faction, Young Independence, remains modest, they have gained 900 members since February and now have 2,600 dedicated young kippers canvassing up and down the country.

It’s not just Ukip that is trawling for votes and members among young people disillusioned with the traditional parties. The Young Greens have seen the greatest swelling in numbers, with a 165% rise in membership, going from 1,700 members to 4,500 in under a year.

“I think that now we’re offering young people a proper alternative to the status quo,” says Siobhan MacMahon, 26-year-old co-chair of the Young Greens. “And I don’t necessarily think that makes us a protest vote. We’re reflecting the views of a lot of people now and I think that we’re really capturing the momentum.”

Young Labour and Conservative Future still have most members – 20,000 and 15,000 respectively – but as more young people seek an alternative, the presence of the established parties appears to be stagnating. At Bath University, support for Conservative Future collapsed to the point that it was disaffiliated from the student union. “As far as I know, Ukip is the only political society applying to be there,” says Jack Duffin, chairman of the UK Young Independence movement. “Recently we’ve had three students from the University of Exeter contact us, expressing a wish to set up a Young Independence society.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Siobhan MacMahon and Clifford Fleming, co-chairs of the Young Greens. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer

In a recent poll by Tory peer Lord Ashcroft, just 11% of 18-to-24-year-olds said they would vote for the Conservatives if there were a general election tomorrow, as opposed to 12% for Ukip and 19% for the Greens. In the same poll, the Liberal Democrats came out on a par with the British National party, both securing a meagre 2% of the 18-to-24 vote.

“I was a Liberal Democrat,” admits 21-year-old Ukip Students chairman Joe Jenkins. “I campaigned and told all my friends to vote for the Liberal Democrats because ‘when we go to university it’ll be free’. And then for me to turn around and tell my friends, ‘Oh, sorry, they lied to me too’ – it was ridiculous. I’ll never forgive them for it.” Under his leadership, Young Independence launched Ukip Students this summer and has established 18 societies in universities across the UK, with a particular stronghold at the University of Chester.

But the youth wing of Ukip has had more than its fair share of damaging controversies during its growth spurt: British-born Sanya-Jeet Thandi, once described as a “rising star” by Ukip leader Nigel Farage, quit the party this year, claiming that Ukip had “descended into a form of racist populism that I cannot bring myself to vote for”. And in January, Olly Neville, leader of the young kippers, was sacked from the party for his stance on gay marriage.

Despite this, the Young Independence numbers continue to climb. “One of the things that has attracted so many young people to Young Independence recently is a focus on domestic policies, not just Europe and immigration,” says 17-year-old Joshua Jones, who is now in charge of whipping the young kippers into action around the east Midlands (and is possibly the only teenager in the country to still say “jolly good”).

“I’m not trying to disguise the fact I’m something of an eccentric,” he adds. “To be interested in politics, and to join a political party at such a young age, you have to be a little different.”

While Farage and his older entourage hammer on about the perils of immigration, the youth movement sticks to education and taxes. “I didn’t really care that much about the European Union when I joined Ukip,” says Jones. “I was attracted by the education policy mainly.”

He will certainly be considered “different” when he goes to university to read history – this year the National Union of Students denounced Ukip as a “racist, xenophobic, homophobic and sexist organisation”. Last week the NUS decided against condemning Islamic State.

For the 22-year-old co-chairman of the Young Greens, Clifford Fleming – also a former Lib Dem – it was the possibility of an alternative and a swing to the left of the establishment that attracted him. “Young people are becoming more and more alienated by politics,” he said. “I realised quite quickly that Labour wasn’t this super-leftwing group that wanted to make everywhere so much more equal. I looked at their policies and none of them really addressed anything; they just kind of skirted around the edges.

“I joined Young Greens because the Green party offers lots of alternatives that are different from what everyone is saying. The Green party doesn’t think in five-year terms. We have a much longer trajectory of trying to create a better vision – and I think lots of young people are turning to us because of this.”

Young Greens and Young Independence may have little in common ideologically, but they share two things: a swelling in their numbers and a rejection of the political establishment in its current state. What we are experiencing is a revolution in youth politics.

Both reflect a disillusion with the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance, the tripling of university tuition fees, the proposal to scrap benefits for those under 21, and attitudes to young people summed up by former Tory cabinet minister Lord Tebbit’s view that young unemployed people should be made to pull ragwort from roadsides in return for state support.

Ashley Cowburn is this year’s winner of the Anthony Howard Award for Young Journalists, established by the Haymarket Media Group in memory of the celebrated political journalist and former deputy editor of the Observer