Golliwog Display - Yes, It’s Racist

Many, many years ago, Robertson’s, the manufacturers of Golden Shred marmalade, adopted the golliwog symbol, not at the time seen as racially charged, as its trade mark. The firm officially retired that symbol in 2002; at the time there were mutterings of political correctness; the firm insisted it was a business decision. But elsewhere, the golliwog lives on.

The Ryleys. With hanging golliwogs in the background ((c) Eastnews Press Agency))

And in a doll form, it has been on very prominent display at the White Hart, a pub in the Essex town of Grays. Sadly, someone took exception to the display and made a complaint to the Police. They duly arrived and took the dolls away. Then someone tipped off the Daily Mail, who went to the Home Office to see if Suella Braverman would like to pass comment on the seizure.

With all her other initiatives failing to catch the public mood, of course she would. “Suella Braverman blasts police force for sending FIVE officers to seize collection of golliwog dolls from family pub as Home Office source warns they 'shouldn't be involved in this nonsense’” howled the headline.

Do go on. “The Home Secretary has scolded a police force for sending five officers to a family-owned pub to seize a collection of golliwog dolls, it was revealed yesterday … Suella Braverman is said to have been furious about the approach, which also saw police question pub owner Benice Ryley, and has told Essex Police that bosses should be focusing on catching real criminals rather than seizing toys”. Of course she was.

There was more. “Mrs Ryley, who has run the pub with her husband for 17 years, said some of the dolls are very valuable, with one worth up to £1,000. They have built a collection of the black-faced toys and other memorabilia donated by customers over the years. The pub has previously refused to move the dolls after the local authority received a complaint in 2018”.

Mrs Ryley went on to tell “The last thing this pub is is racist, we hold Indian weddings here all the time and of course everyone is welcome”. But then, the social media history of her husband, who appears to be resident in the Turkish resort town of Marmaris, came to light, and it suggested that the pub display was no innocently gathered collection of memorabilia.

More golliwogs, some of them hanging

There on his Facebook page was the implicitly racist “White Lives Matter”, the predictable follow up “When is White History Month please. [sic] Anybody know?”, and another of those golliwog dolls looking around the door with the caption “Hello Great Britain, Am I Allowed Back In?” Another image had the Colston Statue’s base with a golliwog figure instead of the statue.

Christopher Ryley (for it was he) had captioned this one “Sadiq,s [sic] new ideas”. He does misuse commas rather a lot. And then the pièce de résistance: a photo of two of those dolls hanging from the pub bar, with Ryley telling anyone listening “They used to hang them in Mississippi years ago”. If it walks like a racist, and talks like a racist, it might just be a racist.

But that has not stopped the so-called Free Speech Union, domain of the loathsome Toby Young, from wading in. ‘Home Secretary Suella Braverman has criticised Essex Police for sending five officers to a family-owned pub to seize a collection of golliwog dolls - the dolls came quietly, but the police force regard their presence at the venue as a possible ‘hate crime’”.

Sunder Katwala had something to say about that. “That may reflect the use of the golliwog dolls to depict the public display of a lynching, with the landlord referencing lynchings of black people in the deep South in his online social media communication about why he depicted them hanging in this way”. Dead right it might. Does “hate crime” look so OTT now? There was more.

“It would be illuminating to know if the landlord's online comments indicating that he was using the golliwog dolls to depict a lynching above his bar in the pub impact on the views of [the Free Speech Union] or [Toby Young] about where the boundaries should lie”. Or, perish the thought, Tobes and his pals somehow failed to do their research and took the Daily Mail on trust?

The Mail suggests the Ryleys are victims. The evidence suggests not.

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