ONE OF Britain’s largest pub chains is to face investigation for racial discrimination after a group, including a police officer and a priest who had attended an Irish Travellers’ meeting, were refused entry to a north London pub.
The incident occurred last Thursday shortly before 5pm when some of those who had attended an Irish Travellers’ Movement in Britain meeting at offices on Holloway Road went to the JD Wetherspoons-owned Coronet pub a few doors away.
The group, including Cheshire Constabulary’s head of diversity Insp Mark Watson, solicitor Martin Howe and the group’s chairman, Fr Joe Brown, along with a number of Travellers, were blocked by doormen.
Mr Howe, who is to issue legal proceedings against JD Wetherspoons today, said the doormen had told him they had been instructed not to allow in anyone who had been at the Travellers’ conference because of “problems last year, except that there weren’t any”.
The Travellers movement director Yvonne McNamara said: “It was only when Insp Watson produced his police identity card that the doormen allowed entrance to speak to the manager – and only on condition that Insp Watson be responsible for the group going to speak to the manager.”
Two bartenders on duty refused to give their full names to him when he approached them, but said that they had been given instructions that any Travellers and those associated with them were not to be allowed in.
Insp Watson confirmed the allegations.
“I will be supplying a full statement of what I saw, heard and did, in order to support this action. This matter will also be reported to the Metropolitan Police as a racially motivated incident for assessment and investigation,” he said.
A spokesman for JD Wetherspoons, which runs more than 700 pubs throughout Britain, said: “We are not aware of the incident and all the details surrounding it. However, we will be carrying out a full investigation with the area manager, pub manager and team on duty.”
An attempt to speak to the Coronet’s manager failed when the telephone call was disconnected.
Other people, who had attended an equality conference for gays, bisexuals and transgender people in the Resource Centre on Holloway Road, “were similarly barred” from the Coronet because the doormen thought that they, too, had attended the Travellers’ meeting, the Travellers’ group alleges.
Saying the incident highlighted the “everyday occurrences” of discrimination against Irish Travellers, Ms McNamara said her group was outraged by “this blatant act” against them, “their friends and colleagues”.
