How fake news and an anti-immigrant agenda rocked Royston

When John* wandered along to 325 Royston Road a few Monday evenings ago, it was mainly because he was intrigued. A neighbour had mentioned a protest outside what had once been the St. Roch’s Chapel House — latterly the Royston Youth Action building — but which had since lain empty for a number of years. Now, the neighbour said, it was going to be turned into temporary homeless accommodation — could John believe it? 

It wasn’t right, said the neighbour: the building is practically in the playground of St. Roch’s Primary School; think of the children. And what’s more — the neighbour was on a roll now — the person behind all this was the owner of the Tartan Lodge, a hotel currently housing homeless people on Alexandra Parade that had been the subject of much consternation locally.

This all sounded reasonable to John. He’s not against homeless accommodation, he later told me, but it didn’t seem like a suitable location, and the Tartan Lodge had a poor reputation locally. Royston Road wasn’t far from his home, and he could do with stretching his legs. So at around 6pm on Monday 21 June, he set off. 

At first, he remembers, it “just felt like an ordinary protest.” He watched as residents waved signs, danced to music from a portable speaker, and chatted companionably with each other and a small number of police officers who had shown up to maintain order. There were dogs on leads and children on bikes, the atmosphere vaguely carnival-esque. But after a while, he heard it: a shout breaking out amongst a small cluster of protesters, and it sounded like “immigrants go home”. 

John was shocked, and he was confused — how was immigration even relevant? This wasn’t what he’d signed up for, so he quickly left, his walk home permeated with discomfort and bemusement. Later, other locals told me, the building was rushed, its storm doors broken into and its mail rifled through. A few days later, its windows were smashed overnight. 

John’s neighbour had been wrong about the circumstances surrounding the building: the new owner was Hajar Salih, a restaurateur with a string of successful shawarma shops (as profiled previously by The Bell) and no plans to use 325 Royston Road for accommodation of any kind. But in a matter of days, the rumours had spread and distorted: it was going to be used to house asylum seekers; children from the school and the elderly congregation from the Catholic church opposite were at risk; “illegal immigrants” were already living there in Portacabins (a video purporting to prove this was later found to show construction workers on the site using a cabin as a break room). 

So just how did a run-down building on a quiet northeast street come to be at the centre of such a furore — and is it part of a pattern?