It’s been a long time since I’ve heard of gollywog dolls. The last time was in 2011 when I organised a small protest in Sutton against a shop that refused to remove the offensive dolls from public display despite repeated requests. The story was picked up by the national Guardian and you can read my own personal account of the situation in this blog piece.
This week I was reminded about golliwogs by two separate incidents. The first was a row in Beaconsfield over a local festival to celebrate Enid Blyton, author of the book Three Little Golliwogs that popularised the grotesque character in the 1940′s and 50′s. Here’s an excerpt from that book:
“Once the three bold Golliwogs, Golly, Woggie, and Nigger, decided to go for a walk to Bumble-Bee Common. Golly wasn’t quite ready so Woggie and Nigger said they would start off without him, and Golly would catch them up as soon as he could. So off went Woggie and Nigger, arm-in-arm, singing merrily their favorite song.”
That favorite song was Ten Little Nigger Boys. Blyton’s books were riddled with negative characterisations of Black people, from their exaggerated features to their sly, deceptive characters.
BBC London TV covered the story today and included interview with a local resident who expressed his disgust at Blyton’s writings including one book that featured a golliwog character being carted off to prison at the end.
Unrelated to that, on Twitter yesterday a local Sutton Conservative took to reminding me about my anti-golliwog protest two years ago and repeatedly called me a “bully” – apparently for bullying the High Street shop.
The activist Jason Hughes – who looks set to run for the council in 2014 in the Sutton South ward and who I believe is an assistant to the Tory group in the civic center – continued to throw the allegation that I was a bully even after I pointed out that I had tried without success for over two months to get the dolls taken out of public view.
When I initially spoke to the shop owners I was met with incredulity and anger. I then raised the matter with the local police but in a show of defiance after an officer visited the premises the owner actually increased the number of golliwogs in the window.
It was only after I announced a protest that the shop relented and took the dolls down while releasing a statement that they were continuing to sell them under the counter.
Hughes (pictured above in my photo-montage) told me he believed in “consumer choice”, which clearly implied that he was in favour of displaying the golliwogs. I asked him to recognize that the dolls cause Black people offense and, after initially ducking the question, he agreed with me but said I should not have gone about things in the way I did.
I then asked Hughes whether he believes I should have given up, having tried and failed to get the shop to recognize that displaying the dolls caused offense. He didn’t answer that question at all, preferring instead to return, in a very childish way, to calling me a bully again. You can read the discussion below.
I only hope that Hughes, who seems like an ambitious young man, does not seek to run for parliament in a seat with a large Black population as he may have some explaining to do with Black potential voters about his attitude towards golliwogs.
He certainly seems out of step with the national Conservative party who have been turning their attention to how to appeal to BAME communities recently, as I noted in a recent blog:
Interestingly, the Conservatives have been changing tact lately. Cameron has signalled he wants more BAME MPs to add to the nine elected in 2010 and has ordered party vice-chair Alok Sharma and other ministers to come up with policies that will appeal to black and Asian communities. Tory cabinet members recently had a special briefing on the need to win over BAME voters in key marginals and nullify the negative legacy of Enoch Powell.
Returning to the subject of golliwog dolls, it is sad that in 2013 we are still arguing about them – in Beaconsfield and on Twitter – when they clearly are offensive.
The negative reaction I experienced during my protest two years ago was a real eye-opener as to the level of anger that some people felt at the idea of their beloved golliwog doll being taken away from them, their utter lack of regard for the fact that it was a grotesque representation of a Black person, or the fact that many people of my generation were hurt by being called a ‘golliwog’ at school.
Anyone who has read Blyton’s books knows golliwogs are not lovable and, aside from their malevolent characters, are actually fairly scary in appearance.
Both Beaconsfield and Hughes are living in a past where offending sections of society did not matter, a past where racism was on open display on TV shows and in the streets.
While neither the residents of Beaconsfield or Hughes would wish those aspects of the past to return they are both holding onto a potent symbol of that past.
By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway
