‘Politics is dead’: Russell Brand opens café on estate that fought off developers

Russell Brand arrives at the Trew Era café on Whitmore Road. Photograph: Ella Jessel

Comedian, actor and activist Russell Brand has added yet another string to his bow and opened a “social enterprise” café on Hoxton’s New Era estate.

The Trew Era café – its name a splicing of his own YouTube news show The Trews and the estate where he helped 90 families hang onto their homes last year – opened today to a crowd of over a hundred people.

The nonprofit café on Whitmore Road will be staffed by recovering addicts and funded through sales of his book Revolution. It has been built on the site of a former bric-a-brac shop that shut when the estate was sold off.

“I feel like a minor royal without the allegations,” joked Brand as he elbowed his way to the front of the crowd where he was joined by the New Era ‘girls’ Lynsay Spiteri, Danielle Molinari, Lindsey Garrett and Jasmin Stone from the Focus E15 mums campaign.

Photographers surround the Trew Era café. Photograph: Ella Jessel

Declaring the café open, he said: “This estate was going to be closed by Westbrook but because of these women and the way they organised and the way they confronted authority- it was not able to happen.”

He said the coffee shop was a symbol of the success of the grassroots campaign, describing his new venture as a “fully self-supporting new economic enterprise”.

In his speech, Brand accused mainstream political parties of dividing communities, saying: “As long as we have only got parties that are interested in causing division, hatred and representing big business, we will create our own system.

“When a party emerges that says it will protect people on the Sweets Way Estate, on the Carpenter’s Estate, or on the New Era estate – then you have got a party worth voting for.”

Carol Joyce who has lived on the New Era Estate for 17 years. Photograph: Ella Jessel

Outside the café with her friends was Carol Joyce, 68, who has lived on New Era for 17 years. She used to come to the bric-a-brac shop to have a cup of tea with her neighbours – the redbrick estate has no communal garden or balconies.

When asked what she thought of the new café owner Russell Brand, her praise was effusive: “He has got such a social conscience but he actually sees things through. He involves himself 100 per cent. He hasn’t cut and run. We think he is amazing,” she said.

Addressing the crowd, Brand said: “Politics is dead. This is the end of politics. What we are discussing now is what comes after. Something worse, or something better.

“We have an opportunity to make something better. It will start with small enterprises like this which put the power where it belongs – with people.”