19th August 2013
A central Leicester pub was forced to close on Saturday after its hacked Facebook page claimed that it had banned military personnel for fear of upsetting "local non-British citizens".
Fearing reprisals, the Globe in the city's Silver Street closed amid fears of violet reprisals. The fake Facebook posting was picked by a nationalist blog and led to the 300 year-old pub being engulfed with allegedly abusive phone calls from people who had read the posting and the blog … and believed the statements. The doors were closed on Saturday evening and security staff brought in.
The incident is being investigated by Leicestershire Police.
Stephen Gould, Managing Director of brewery Everards managing director, said to the BBC: "We were placed in a position that throughout the day our staff had to respond to very aggressive people obviously believing that the policy was true. Ourselves and the manager will have to monitor that very, very carefully over the coming days." He added: "We have no idea why The Globe was targeted but we will be working with police to find out why this happened."
Executive Chef Thomas Hains, said: "This was a very malicious attack. All our staff were on edge. I've hardly got off the phone dealing with people making abusive calls. It's frightening. What is being claimed has nothing to do with us. We do not discriminate against anyone and certainly not against members of our armed forces."
The Globe's Twitter feed said: "The globe has been the victim of a malicious and false news story which states we are no longer serving military personnel. This is false. This pub never has and never will adopt a policy towards the service of either current or ex-military personnel. We understand the delicate nature of this situation & we would sincerely ask for people to stop making threats towards the pub or its staff."
This morning, the pub tweeted in response to a deluge of supportive messages: "it's business as usual, we love you all too, thanks for the support" together with a smiley face.
