Is Blackpool's new Reform pub all it seems?

Fleet Street’s finest packed their features writers off to Euston station last week with the news that the first Reform-themed pub in the country had opened its doors in Blackpool.

The Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and i were among those who dispatched colour writers to the town’s Talbot pub following the news that the long-standing Conservative club had defected to Nigel Farage’s mob and decked itself out in Reform colours (“As GB News blared from several screens inside, most pub-goers sat out on the newly-painted terrace enjoying their cheap drinks in the sun this week,” marvelled the Telegraph’s Tom McArdle.)

But was all exactly what it seemed? Campaign group Hope Not Hate have done some digging and found that, while the Talbot had indeed once been a Conservative club, it hasn’t been since 2012. And, having long since been rebranded, it has proved a popular destination for some characters with pretty unsavoury views – until, in several cases, they are cancelled.

One such event cancelled in 2018 was The Road Ahead, a day of political speeches and entertainment “with a focus on future politics, organising growth and leadership”. Co-owner Nick Lowe defended his bookings, saying: “Every year people slag us off on Facebook saying it’s a Nazi event, but it’s not. I’m not racist. If somebody wants to book my room and I’m going to make money off it I’m going to do it. It’s not against the law.”

It is a mite unfortunate, then, that three of the listed speakers have since been prosecuted for actually breaking the law, through incitement to racial hatred: Jez Turner, who called for “soldiers” to liberate England from “Jewish control” in an address outside Downing Street, Alison Chabloz, a musician with ditties suggesting the Holocaust was “a bunch of lies” and referring to Auschwitz as a “theme park”, and ‘Rev James’, actually James Costello, an unordained cleric who also goes by the name of Pontifex Maximus.

The pub was also forced to cancel a music festival, Real Rebellion, last year after Hope Not Hate reported on the dubious politics of some of the bands involved. Canadian group Battlefront’s tunes include Aryan Soldiers, Pride is our Will and String ‘em Up, while Germans Combat BC decorated the cover of album No Apologies – No Regrets with imagery popular with the country’s 1933-45 government.

“It’s nowt to do with me. I just rent the room out,” Nick Lowe told the Blackpool Gazette at the time. “I’m not racist at all but I have to make money somehow.”

Now, though, he is busy entertaining the many journalists making the trip north to London to marvel at his rebranding exercise. It’s an unfortunate history alright – but on the other hand, as the Telegraph points out, “the pie and mash will only set you back £3.20, while a chicken curry can be had for £3.50 and a Sunday roast is £5”.