Pub decor

Ugh. I don’t think the police should have been involved, but at the same time I really don’t think pub owners or restaurant havers or food truck users should have racist caricatures on display. Not every “should” or “should not” is a police matter, to put it mildly.

The landlady of a pub whose collection of golliwog dolls was confiscated by police has assembled replacements, which she plans to display in defiance of a continuing investigation.

Last week four Essex police officers and a trainee seized all the dolls on show in the White Hart Inn in Grays as part of an investigation into an alleged hate crime.

We don’t have “golliwog” dolls in the US; it’s not even a word in US idiom. This is a golliwog doll:

No, I don’t think pubs should have those on display. I also don’t think it’s a police matter.

The dolls divide opinion in Grays. On Tuesday some pub regulars turned up to show support, but others expressed their fury. The pub’s landlady, Benice Ryley, 62, refuses to accept they are racist.

A neighbor disagrees with her.

Tony Daly, who manages a nearby charity shop, said the dolls made his “blood boil” and said he was shocked they had been on display in such a diverse area.

He also plans to confront Ryley over the issue. He said: “I find them very offensive and I’ll be going there to peacefully put my point across and to educate her. I grew up in Tottenham in the 70s when we fought against those kind of things. They used to call black people golliwogs. It’s a racist symbol that says slavery to me and the black and white minstrels. It’s so outdated and offensive to black people.”

It may be that Ryley is unaware of the black and white minstrels, but if so she should have taken the trouble to learn more. I hope she can hear what Tony Daly tells her.

Sunder Katwala, director of the integration thinktank British Future, said he was concerned by a post by Chris Ryley [husband of Benice and licensee of the pub] on Facebook. The 2016 post showed dolls hanging from a shelf in the bar alongside a comment by him saying, “They used to hang them in Mississippi years ago”. Katwala said that Chris Ryley had referenced lynchings in Mississippi in connection to the pub’s golliwogs collection in a Facebook post in 2016.

Uh, yeah. That makes the denial of racist intent less credible.

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