Golliwog in the window - should this really be in court?

[Rob Ray]

I call bullshit to that comment. You get plenty of racism in other surrounding counties, overt as well as covert and snide.

Oh I didn't say otherwise. My beloved Suffolk may not have elected Douglas Carswell but it did put Tom Hunt in to whine about Novotel migrants.

 

[bimble]

I'm surprised that a few people on here had golliwog dolls as children, didn't know we were that old, but also i don't really understand what they were - i mean were they just part of your toy collection, and seen as something like a doll but not gendered so more like a cuddly bear or what?

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Robertsons had their own private aircraft, I saw it at Morlaix Airport in the mid-80's. Why they needed their own plane and what it was doing in Brittany is anyone's guess...

 

[kenny g]

I'm surprised that a few people on here had golliwog dolls as children, didn't know we were that old, but also i don't really understand what they were - i mean were they just part of your toy collection, and seen as something like a doll but not gendered so more like a cuddly bear or what?

You could get badges if you sent in coupons from jam jars. They were considered dubious in the 80s.

 

[pbsmooth]

I think for a lot of people they were just dolls. Why would kids think anything else?
And for a lot of people a gran probably had one - a gran who perhaps wasn't a massive racist! - and therefore it's part of a cherished memory.
And for most people once it's spelt out this is a bad thing they get rid and move on. The closet racists don't. But assuming everyone has always known this is a bad thing seems wrong to me.
Like the Uncle Ben thing. I'm sure lots of white people thought absolutely nothing of the fact there was a black guy on the rice. If anything some of them probably thought they were being multicultural!

 

[izz]

I'm surprised that a few people on here had golliwog dolls as children, didn't know we were that old, but also i don't really understand what they were - i mean were they just part of your toy collection, and seen as something like a doll but not gendered so more like a cuddly bear or what?

I'm 61 and had one when I was about 4. I think someone had saved tokens from marmalade to get it. It was just part of my (not terribly vast) collection and of course I didn't understand any implications of it but my parents took it off me pretty soon.

 

[andysays]

I'm surprised that a few people on here had golliwog dolls as children, didn't know we were that old, but also i don't really understand what they were - i mean were they just part of your toy collection, and seen as something like a doll but not gendered so more like a cuddly bear or what?

I had one as a child (born mid sixties) and so did my younger brother.

One of them might have been a hand me down from an earlier generation.

I'm sure both of my parents would have been horrified by the idea that their choice of toys was racist, but looking at it since it clearly was.

 

[Spymaster]

Tbh to take the racism out of Essex it may be necessary to remove Essex.

I went into a pub in Southend with another asian fella and it was just like in the films where it all goes silent and people look over. The barmaid came over and said "Take no notice of them lot love. What can I get ya?" It was an L-shaped bar and a couple of folk even got up and looked round the corner!

When were leaving I whistled Dueling Banjos.

This was only a few years ago

 

[The39thStep]

I'm surprised that a few people on here had golliwog dolls as children, didn't know we were that old, but also i don't really understand what they were - i mean were they just part of your toy collection, and seen as something like a doll but not gendered so more like a cuddly bear or what?

They were fairly common when I was a child , just seen as quirky cuddly things. They were also in the Noddy books, there were good golliwogs and bad golliwogs. My sister had one, I had a velvet covered elephant which I remember being very upset about when my mother threw it on a bonfire in a clear up as it was 'falling to bits'.

 

[8ball]

Like the Uncle Ben thing. I'm sure lots of white people thought absolutely nothing of the fact there was a black guy on the rice. If anything some of them probably thought they were being multicultural!

Until there was a load of discussion about it, I just figured he owned the rice company.

 

[two sheds]

I remember the golliwog from Noddy

Enid Blyton’s Noddy books contained a “Golliwog” character, and she also wrote three books entitled The Three Golliwogs (1944), The Proud Golliwog (1951), and The Golliwog Grumbled (1955).

One of the characters was actually the N word, last edition published in 1968. Changed by the 'PC brigade'

The Three Golliwogs - The Enid Blyton Society

There's also a golliwogg.co.uk

Golliwog Books - "Gladstone the White Golliwog" children's book. This unique Golliwog book is written and illustrated by Frederick Covins, the author of many best-selling children's books, and is a perfect present for any young reader or Golly fan/collector. The "Gladstone the White Golliwog" children's book is not available anywhere else - so ...

 

[Leafster]

I'm surprised that a few people on here had golliwog dolls as children, didn't know we were that old, but also i don't really understand what they were - i mean were they just part of your toy collection, and seen as something like a doll but not gendered so more like a cuddly bear or what?

I was born in the early sixties and had one too. I had no idea what it represented. It was just another cuddly toy along with Fido the dog, Big Ted & Little Ted. (I also had a felt elephant a bit like The39thStep's). I don't know who bought it and although my Mum kept a lot of my cuddly toys it wasn't among them. I can only assume that at some point, my parents realised the connotations and got rid of it.

 

[kabbes]

Artefacts of a culture are both constructed by that culture and also constitute the culture. You can’t take an artefact out of its cultural context and wonder how people didn’t notice it was racist, because racism isn’t some objective, measurable thing that exists independently from societal norms, institutional practices, everyday interactions and personal experiences. Racism is the problematisation of those things in the context of power relations that have been made explicit and challenged. That’s why a child in the 60s wasn’t being racist by loving their golly doll despite its obviously grotesque caricaturing and horrific origins.

 

[bimble]

, I had a velvet covered elephant which I remember being very upset about when my mother threw it on a bonfire in a clear up as it was 'falling to bits'.

i am sorry to hear about your elephant, sounds like it had a good life though, well loved.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

You could get badges if you sent in coupons from jam jars. They were considered dubious in the 80s.

I had several golly badges that my granny got me from sending off jam jar coupons. That was in the 60s and 70s and at the time there was no suggestion at all that there was anything wrong with them.

 

[The39thStep]

i am sorry to hear about your elephant, sounds like it had a good life though, well loved.

The rosebud of cheadlehighstreet

 

[krtek a houby]

I was going to say, looking into the debate headlines. Is this or isnt this guy racist?
Where's the pub?

What are we arguing about?

Perhaps read the thread?

 

[Boudicca]

I had several golly badges that my granny got me from sending off jam jar coupons. That was in the 60s and 70s and at the time there was no suggestion at all that there was anything wrong with them.

Yes, my grandma did this too.

 

[chilango]

I had one in the late 70s that I called Golly. I don't remember it hanging around long though. Unlike the grotesque racist caricatures in some "Boys' Own" type books that I'd inherited from God knows where (probably the same place as my much cherished 1936 atlas of the world),
which still sat on my bookshelf in the mid-80s. They were explicitly and violently racist, even to my 11 year old eyes (and I'd not been above some casual and unthinking racist behaviour in my childhood).

Let's not sugarcoat this stuff. It's racist now, and it was racist then. Just as many people are racist now and were racist then.

I tended to agree with LDC on the "behaviour not the person" approach, but I'm not sure I do anymore. I fear "being a racist" is now increasingly re-normalised and re-legitimate.

 

[pbsmooth]

yes, this govt and the right-wing media (which includes all sorts of twats not just the Daily Mail) have legitimised it with endless biased coverage/made-up bullshit about foreigners/brown people/the bogey man only ever doing bad things and salt of the earth white/british people only ever doing good things and being the victim. 'so, maybe brown people are all bad?' thinks the village idiot. I've simplified it but we all know the drill.

 

[danny la rouge]

I had several golly badges that my granny got me from sending off jam jar coupons. That was in the 60s and 70s and at the time there was no suggestion at all that there was anything wrong with them.

I remember golly badges, but I also remember my parents telling me they were inappropriate. This would have been in the early 70s, so the idea was certainly around at that time. I was only young so I don’t know if this was a new realisation by my parents, or how it came about. I vaguely think my granny had collected tokens for the enamel badge but my parents were unhappy about it.

My parents, now in their 80s, do have social attitudes that are old fashioned, but they were progressive for their time. (Although my mum has gone into reverse on sex and gender since joining the Wee Frees! ).

 

[ElizabethofYork]

danny la rouge I just had to google Wee Frees!

 

[danny la rouge]

danny la rouge I just had to google Wee Frees!

Horrific, isn’t it?

 

[8ball]

danny la rouge I just had to google Wee Frees!

Same here.

 

[Rob Ray]

I fear "being a racist" is now increasingly re-normalised and re-legitimate.

For quite a large part of the public I don't think it was ever de-legitimised, we just didn't hear that shit as much in the public sphere because the people who'd say it were reluctant to do so outside trusted circles (despite the waters often being probed for sympathy) and only got really vocal when they could hide behind keyboards. In 2014 one in three people self-declared as racist, which has declined over the intervening decade, but as of 2022 one in five people were still responding that race equality had gone too far and public attitudes to migration have always been pretty crap.

We've come a long way but as with most progressive ideals it's not penetrated as ubiquitously as can sometimes seem the case from personal connections, and the moral panic over the "Woke Agenda" has emboldened behaviour that'd usually be more circumspect because it's a disliked minority position.

 

[8ball]

I fear "being a racist" is now increasingly re-normalised and re-legitimate.

Really? I thought almost everyone (including the bulk of racists) was still pretty horrified by the idea of being considered a racist.

 

[chilango]

Really? I thought almost everyone (including the bulk of racists) was still pretty horrified by the idea of being considered a racist.

I think this is one of the key shifts that has been happening.

 

[8ball]

I think this is one of the key shifts that has been happening.

You mean more people will just shrug and say “so what” if called out on something clearly racist?

 

[Serge Forward]

My younger sister had a golly doll in the 60s. No one in the family thought anything of it. I remember kids at school with them Robertsons golly badges. No one thought much more about it than whether it was the one playing a guitar or a saxophone. Salford was a predominantly white area back then and I suppose we didn't know any better. Fifty or sixty years later, there's no fucking excuses.

 

[Orang Utan]

Didn’t have a golly but did have a book called Little Black Sambo which is pretty grotesque