After the riots: What caused the Tamworth hotel attack?

ITV News Investigations Editor Daniel Hewitt delivers the first of a special two-part report into the events that led up to an attack on a hotel housing asylum seekers in Tamworth, and what happens next

On a sunny summer's evening a month ago, fire and fury came to a quiet English market town.

Tamworth has never known violence of the kind that exploded on its streets on Sunday, August 4.

A protest outside a hotel housing asylum seekers, earlier advertised as a demonstration on Facebook in the wake of a riot in Southport, spiralled into a siege.

A manic mob of naked hate threw off all inhibition and with it bricks, fireworks and petrol bombs.

Only a couple dozen police officers stood between an army of angry men (it was mainly men) and a group of asylum seeker residents inside the Holiday Inn Express.

We spent a week in Tamworth, speaking to people who were there - both inside and outside the hotel - and the people who've lived in the town their whole lives, to understand what happened and why.

Nothing can excuse or truly explain the violent attack on innocent people, police and property that unfolded in Tamworth or anyone else across Britain in those shameful days at the beginning of August.

We wanted to understand what one town - in this case Tamworth - was like in the weeks leading up to the shock of August 4, how people felt and feel now, and what happens next.

In the first of two special reports, we begin with those who came under attack - who were almost burned out of the place they were living.

Since 2022, the Holiday Inn Express in the centre of Tamworth has been used exclusively by the Home Office to house asylum seekers. We understand around 180 from multiple countries were staying there on August 4.

Footage from the time shows several male asylum seekers standing at the windows of their rooms, watching on as the rioters below attempted to smash and burn their way inside - and coming scarily close.

In a video shared with us by one of the men, you can hear the fire alarm ringing throughout the hotel, set off by the petrol bombs below.

Three of the men staying at the hotel agreed to speak for the first time about August 4.

They are clearly traumatised by what happened, their heads bowed as they spoke to me.

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We met away from Tamworth, where they're staying following the attack. They are asylum seekers from war-torn Iraq, Sudan and Syria, and we are not revealing their identities for their safety.

"Did you think: 'What are they going to do if they get in?'" I asked.

"I felt it was so close to happening, I was terrified, I felt like they were coming for us in the hotel and into our rooms," said one man.

Another of the men said: "We expected the worst, we feared for our lives, especially when they broke into the hotel and reached the first floor. We thought, that's it, we're dead."

For the third man we met, he said he did not expect to find violent hostility in the UK.

"I always believed Britain to be a great, safe and a peaceful country," he told me.

"However, when I arrived the reality was so different from what I imagined. That made me wish I were dead.

"We escaped wars and death in our countries, only to find similar troubles here as well."

Wayne Hewin was there on the night.

We met at a sports and social club not far from the hotel, where he was playing darts with friends. He was the only one willing to speak to me on camera.

He's a security guard, and had been on shift near the hotel when he heard about the protest turning nasty.

He headed down there, he told me, and stood with the police, attempting to stop the rioters from getting passed and inside the building - facing their wrath.

"I've lived here 41 years, I have never seen anything like that before in my life," said Wayne.

"There was a young, blonde police officer and she had a riot helmet on. If [the rock] was two foot further this way, it would have hit me on the head. But it hit her, smack on the helmet.

"I did feel intimidated."

He described the rioters as a "bunch of f****** idiots", but when I asked if he was surprised the riot happened in Tamworth, he said: "No."

"With the amount of asylum seekers they've got, no. But the way I see it, is people are just jumping on the bandwagon."

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The attack, he told me, was the wrong way to express their views. What is his view on immigration, I asked?

"Cut it," he instantly replies.

"Look after our own, before anybody else. The immigrants are coming here, and they're held higher than guys that fought for the country sleeping rough on the streets. There's a couple in Tamworth that I know."

"You really think that people who come here are given a better deal than people who live here already?" I ask.

"100%," Wayne replied.

I asked him what evidence he has for that confident claim.

"Just by what the government have said. They get food, housing allowance, you name it," Wayne said.

'Cut it. Look after our own before anybody else'

The use of the Holiday Inn Express for those seeking asylum became the talk of the town in 2022 when it closed to the paying public, and it has been a subject of debate since.

The hotel is the town's largest, and sits next door to Tamworth's most popular attraction - the Snow Dome leisure centre - and a big park and playground.

In July this year, the new Labour MP Sarah Edwards made the hotel a key feature of her first parliamentary speech.

"In Tamworth, the Holiday Inn has been used for asylum purposes for years and the simple reality is that residents want their hotel back," she said in the House of Commons.

"Tamworth benefits from local tourism and... the Holiday Inn should be for holidays."

She was reflecting a sentiment we kept hearing, but it's more than just the use of it for holidays. It's the perception some people are getting something while local people are not.

In a nearby cafe, Caroline serves tea and coffee and hears the customers chat about everything and nothing.

Was she shocked by the attack?

"Yes. What they did was horrendous," she told me.

She questions why some people get help and others don't, and told me the hotel became a symbol of unfairness and frustration, before local concerns were hijacked by hate.

"We've got a lad that sleeps homeless around the corner. He's been there for weeks and weeks, but you think, if it [hotel accommodation] can be done for lots of other people, why could it not be done for him?" she said.

"It just seems to be, you just look at that situation and that situation, and you think, 'Wow'."

'You think, if it can be done for lots of other people, why could it not be done for him?

In the park behind the hotel, I sat down at a bench with Dawn and John - who've lived in Tamworth for decades.

Dawn was not surprised the riots happened.

"We were expecting it to come to Tamworth, because we knew that immigrants were in the Holiday Inn Express," she said.

I ask them if they think there's an element of racism to people's views on the use of the hotel for asylum seekers.

"I think there's some jealousy, possibly," said John.

"That they're all in a hotel over there being well looked-after, I think that's a jealousy in the country."

John said he works in Birmingham and is used to mixing with many nationalities, but some people in Tamworth are not.

Dawn then added: "I don't necessarily agree with them being put up in hotels and everything being paid for them, but we're all human at the end of the day. That's how I look at it.

"Everyone deserves a life."

Dawn told ITV News that while she does not 'necessarily agree' with asylum seekers being housed in hotels, that 'everyone deserves a life'

When Tamworth started taking asylum seekers two years ago, charity Community Together began providing support to those staying in the hotel.

Lee Bates runs the charity and has attempted to provide information to the local community about what life is really like for those seeking asylum.

He said myth and rumour have made them an easy target.

"We're in a cost-of-living crisis and people are struggling. The concern is, 'If they're in a hotel, they're being looked after' when the reality is quite different," he said.

"There is three people to a [hotel] room, they don't have access to bar facilities or any of those luxuries. They don't get a choice over what they eat.

"They haven't been allowed to work, and they get £8.40 a week from the government. So, I think the perception is different to the reality."

He is encouraged by the widespread backlash to the violent acts of a few, telling me "people who have been very vocal about the hotel have condemned the action".

But he believes people need to be educated on why people seek asylum and what restrictions they face upon their arrival.

So far, there have been at least 63 arrests and 25 charges brought by the police following the attack on August 4.

A month on, what is left is an empty hotel and a town still full of unease.

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