Pub hit with £8,000 fines after refusing to serve traveller

A pubco and manager have been fined after the manager refused to serve a customer because he was a traveller.

Manager Carol Griffiths of the Blue Mile in Littlemore, Oxfordshire, is appealing prosecution after being hit with the fines and costs for refusing to serve Christopher Joyce on Father's Day.

Griffiths and pub owners React Inns were ordered to pay Joyce £2,500 for injury to his feelings, plus £2,500 damages and £3,000 court costs, at Oxfordshire County Court.

Griffiths said she refused to serve Joyce because he and his family failed to leave another pub in which she had worked quickly enough after drinking-up time.

She denied she was racist.

However, Joyce a 72-year-old father-of-13, told the Oxford Mail: " When I came to this country from Ireland in 1953 there were signs up in the boarding houses saying 'No Irish, no blacks and no dogs'.​

"I thought the situation had improved since then, so I was shocked to be told I was not being served because I was a traveller.

"It was very upsetting."

Joyce said he would use some of his compensation to try and buy a drink at the Blue Mile.