What really forced a Southampton restaurant to close?

“Hotel migrants’ ‘abusive behaviour’ forces restaurant to close,” ran a headline in the Daily Telegraph this week, as it bemoaned the closure of Southampton’s Ceno Bar and Restaurant apparently over “the behaviour of migrants staying in a local hotel”.

The story also gained column inches in the Daily Mail, whose online version went with the less snappy “‘Devastated’ restaurateur forced to close business because of migrant hotel next door says loyal customers were ‘scared off’ by 100 men ‘leering and whistling’ at groups of young girls’. The closure had, it said, “cost four full-time staff members their jobs as well as numerous casual and part time staff”.

The same story appeared in the Daily Express under the headline “‘Impossible’ to keep restaurant open with 100 asylum seekers next door”. But is there more to the story than meets the eye?

Even the Mail, normally glad to take anti-asylum rhetoric at face value, injected some doubt into the tale. Quoting Jamie Darby, who had run the restaurant for 20 years, as saying that “groups of girls don’t want to come here because they have groups of men leering and whistling at them out of the windows,” the copy added “although there is no evidence to support the claims”.

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That is possible because local campaigners say the problem is not the migrants – but actually the business has dropped off as diners are unsurprisingly reluctant to enjoy their meals to the sound of the far right mobs who gather outside each weekend to protest against them.

A spokesperson for Southampton Stand Up To Racism told each of the papers – who inevitably buried their comments deep in the story – that attempts to blame asylum seekers or the hotel for the bar’s closure were “misplaced and unfair”.

“Ceno Bar traded successfully for years alongside the hotel. Its decline followed the start of sustained far-right activity last summer,” the group said. “Over recent months, their repeated demonstrations outside the hotel – often two or three times a week and lasting for hours – have caused serious disruption.”

And the argument was being widely made in local Facebook groups, where many local residents said they were put off by the protesting meatheads rather than those put up at the hotel. “The reality is though that many locals, myself and my friends included, have been put off not by the hotel residents, but the protests that have been going on for the last 6 months or so,” said one, citing the “anti-social and often foul-mouthed behaviour”.

Another said the protests were “wild and very scary”, while yet another reported how “we still visited whilst the protests were going on but at times it was very unpleasant”. Still, don’t let it get in the way of a good migrant-bashing story!