Tamworth asylum hotel attack: How online rumours have real-life consequences
ITV News Investigations Editor Daniel Hewitt delivers the second of a special two-part report into how social media played a role in an attack on a hotel housing asylum seekers in Tamworth
In a small town, news and rumour move fast.
Social media makes it feel smaller, spreading it even faster.
When the Holiday Inn Express in the middle of Tamworth closed to the public in late 2022, to be used to house people going through the asylum process, it instantly became the topic of debate and discussion - largely played out online.
That was until debate gave way to naked hate and exploded onto the streets. A mob made their way to the hotel on August 4 and launched rocks, fireworks and petrol bombs at the windows and at the police in an attempt to get at the 180 asylum seekers inside.
It was a night that shocked and shamed everyone we have spoken to in the town, whatever their view on the hotel’s use.
It is now empty, “closed for repairs” reads an A4 sheet on the glass front, and it’s unclear what will happen next. Is Tamworth now deemed too unsafe to shelter those seeking asylum? Is there fear of further backlash?
We went to The Lamb - the home of Tamworth Football Club - to speak to people as they turned up for their team’s first home game since the attack.
Everyone expresses their shock at the level of violence, but there’s little enthusiasm for the hotel returning to its previous role of housing asylum seekers.
“I don't like it, and I’m not gonna say stand here and say I do,” one young man tells me.
“I also don't think the violence that was there was needed because it put a bad light on Tamworth.
“If people are coming into the country and they're not working, then you know, why are we letting them come in?”
Asylum seekers are not legally allowed to work in the UK while going through the asylum process, except in very limited circumstances. When I put this to him, he asks: “So why are they here then? Do they want to work? Because I don't believe they do.”
People seek asylum for all sorts of reasons, including fleeing wars, but when I put that to him he replies:
“But it's not necessarily all about that though, is it? It's not fleeing wars. A lot of it is fleeing because it's an easy life over here. It’s a golden ticket.”
That is not how 17-year-old Dylan feels, who we meet away from the football in the town centre.
Like lots of people here, he learned of the attack on the hotel through posts on social media - and he believes it is where his generation is picking up misinformation about asylum immigration.
“I’m ashamed to live in Tamworth because of what has just happened,” he told me.
“The asylum seekers needed a place to stay. I would let them stay because they would've done the same if we were in that position. We are lucky that we are not.
"And they, they had found somewhere that they thought was safe for them and then this has happened and scared them.”
Dylan though does not think he speaks for the majority of his generation in Tamworth.
“No, and obviously with social media, it's just going to carry on, and it won't stop until someone actually does something about it," he said.
It is striking the amount of people we have met in Tamworth referring to posts they have seen on social media linked to asylum seekers staying at the hotel, particularly on one popular online community group with over 50,000 followers.
One post referred to a lot, which has been shared hundreds of times and was posted a month before the riot, shows a picture of three men near the Holiday Inn Express with the post accusing them of following and harassing a 15-year-old girl in the town.
The woman who wrote the post said she had reported it to the police.
The comments below consistently claim the men are asylum seekers, but Staffordshire Police told us categorically the men are not asylum seekers or residents of the hotel in Tamworth.
Yet the comments remain public to this day.
We found similar posts on the same community page with no evidence.
The park behind the hotel is a particular source of rumour, and there we met Lesley, looking after her grandchildren. She says social media has a lot to answer for.
“Because of social media, different things people have put on there, saying: ‘Don't go down the park, don't go to the Snow Dome because there's people there, there's men, you know, they're watching children.’ So I think it was inevitable.
“I think all of this is just hearsay.”
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Online rumour has real-life consequence. Back in the town centre, we meet an asylum seeker from Iraq, whose identity we are protecting.
He was staying in the hotel on the night of the riot, and so unlike those who were resident there, he has not been moved out of Tamworth, a town he says has been made almost impossible to live in because of online hate.
“People believe anything that happens in the social media,” he said.
“We're just trying to live in this town, which the government have put us in. It wasn't chosen by us.
“These people don't like us. It doesn't matter what we are. So (I feel at) any time they might attack us or accuse us of anything, even if it's not our fault.
“So we are always, especially me, living in fear every day.”
The riot has had ripples across this community, and its impact is still being felt.
At a community church, home to several different nationalities from people across the world, we meet Ethan, Maxine and Nigel.
Ethan said he was “horrified” by the riots, “because it's just five minutes away from here, and I was just thinking about the people who live locally.”
They are black people in an overwhelmingly white town - 96% of Tamworth’s population is White British, compared to 83% of the UK population.
Maxine has lived here 32 years and said the riot was “not the Tamworth I know”.
The violence has profoundly impacted 18-year-old Nigel and his family. He is from South Africa, and his mum works as a mobile carer. She is now worried about travelling around the town, and even more worried about her son.
“She was really scared to go out to work,” Ethan told me.
“She messaged the people at work to tell them could they change the location for where she was working because of what's happening, you know?
"I think it's really affected not only my mum, but also everyone else that lives here.
“I'm the only black person at my football club, so every time I go out, (my mum) be worried about me, going out, paranoid saying ‘no, don't go’”.
A month on from the attack at the hotel, 63 people have been arrested and across Staffordshire 25 have been charged.
The tiny minority of people who rioted on August 4th do not represent the people of this town or their views.
The view we heard again and again was of local concern about the closure of their hotel for use by the Home Office, with little consultation or information, being hijacked by hate - or as one man put it to us: by “f****** idiots jumping on the bandwagon”.
There is now serious questions over whether this town is deemed safe to house asylum seekers in the future, and if not, what message that sends.
The wider debate about the enormous impact of social media on shaping views on contentious and complicated issues goes way beyond this small Staffordshire market town.
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