Pub stripped of excellence award over Nazi memorabilia

A CORNISH pub has been stripped of a coveted pub of the year award after a single person complained about it having a Nazi armband on display.

The Hole in the Wall, in Bodmin, Cornwall, was given the prize by the county branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) last week.

But it has now had the award revoked following the complaint about the swastika armband, which was given to the pub as a war trophy by a British soldier returning from the Second World War.

Steve Hall, the pub’s landlord, accused Camra of attempting to “whitewash history”.

“It’s been taken out of context completely … at national level,” he said. “It has nothing to do with Camra Kernow.

“Bodmin was a garrison town. These soldiers came back from the war with spoils of war memorabilia.

“It was not to hero-worship Hitler or the Nazis but to celebrate the victory over fascism and to remember their

‘It was not to heroworship Hitler or the Nazis but to celebrate the victory over fascism’

comrades who died fighting against evil. You can’t whitewash history.”

The pub is now out of the running for Camra’s national pub of the year award, for which it had qualified by beating the 600 other pubs in Cornwall to the county prize for the third time.

A spokesperson for Camra Kernow said the “offensive” and “discriminatory” memorabilia meant the pub should not have been “considered for an award”.

Yet it had been on display ever since the pub first opened 80 years ago in an 18th century debtors prison, including when judges visited to decide this year’s winner - and in 2015 and 2016 when the pub previously won the award.

Colin Curless, the sole complainant, lives 20 miles away from the pub in Truro and Mr Hall said he was not sure he had “ever set foot in the pub” and thought that he “must have seen [the armband] online”.

Mr Curless’s complaint came to light when he emailed Cornwalllive, the newspaper, saying he had reported the pub to Camra, that its victory was “hypocrisy” and that the armband was “not a good advert for Cornwall”.