Golliwog dolls in Sutton

Today Lester Holloway writes exclusively for OBV about his campaign to remind a Sutton shopkeeper that 'Golliwogs' have always been offensive to Black people. In fact the doll started out as something that children could throw things at. Here is an early explanation:

The Golliwogg was based on a Black minstrel doll that Upton had played with as a small child in New York. The then-nameless "Negro minstrel doll" was treated roughly by the Upton children. Upton reminiscenced: "Seated upon a flowerpot in the garden, his kindly face was a target for rubber balls..., the game being to knock him over backwards. It pains me now to think of those little rag legs flying ignominiously over his head, yet that was a long time ago, and before he had become a personality.... We knew he was ugly!"

OBV

Just when you thought golliwog dolls were finally relegated to history they pop up again like a reoccurring bad dream. Recent stories about them being banned in deepest Dorset, and police talking action over a neighbour who displayed one in her window next to a black neighbour, might have given the impression that almost everyone was against them.

Not so, not in the London borough of Sutton at least. There, a gift shop openly displays these offensive dolls in the shop window. Both the local police and trading standards officers say they are powerless to stop them.

An article in the local Sutton Guardian provoked an avalanche of criticism against me personally with readers claiming there was nothing wrong with the dolls. A reader poll showed 80 per cent were in favour of golliwogs.

That's why I am organising a protest against the Memory Lane gift shop in Times Square off the High Street. Because only public pressure will make a difference now.

Please attend the peaceful demonstration, to be held this Friday, 7th October. Meeting outside Sutton main train station at noon.

I first visited the shop after a resident complained to me about them. I saw about six golliwogs on the shelves and calmly told the shop owner I found them insulting, but was met by an angry look and a passionate response. She told me I was the only person who had ever complained in 20 years of the shop trading, and denied that golliwogs were caricatures of black people. Black and white people both adored them, she told me.

I complained to the police but after they visited the store, they concluded that no action was possible because the shop had not broken any law and were not displaying the dolls 'maliciously.' After the police constable visited, the number of golliwogs in the shop window increased from one to three.

The British National Party turned up at my council advice surgery last Saturday, filming me against my wishes and barking questions.

I am also facing pressure to cancel the protest from more legitimate sources after the police reported that the dolls had been removed last Friday. But so far there is no word from the shop that they won't be back. A Sutton Guardian reader, who may be from the gift shop itself, wrote in the thread: “I hope that this incident actually brings more business to Memory Lane and it highlights the fact that this is a lovely little shop giving a good service and quality items.”

The owner is quoted in the main article as saying: “We do not believe stocking and selling the dolls is an offence or offensive.” It is my judgement that without a statement from the gift shop declaring they will no longer sell these dolls I am absolutely convinced the golliwog dolls will return should the protest not go ahead.

There is a widespread belief that Sutton's race relations are almost completely harmonious, after all there have been no major incidents to suggest differently. We all get along just fine, I'm told, so why make trouble when there is none?

This is what Dr Martin Luther King Jnr called a “negative peace.”

Dr King said: "I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate... who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."

It was the era of Dr King when golliwogs were all the rage in Britain. An era of overt racism, of “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs” in the window. An age when the golliwog was the child's version of the mantelpiece and fireplace 'black servant boy' porcelain - smiling and subservient to the white master.

Without a personality, the golliwog's livery is reminiscent of the 'house Negro' of enslavement times. It's wide eyes, huge watermelon grin and woolly unkempt hair are clearly gross exaggerations of black features as seen through prejudiced blue eyes. It is not hard to imagine the fixed grin and wide eyes represent the mannerisms fearful black servants deployed for survival in the master's house.

In fact the golliwog was invented in 1879 by New York writer Florence Kate Upton as a minstrel character, who was described as “a horrid sight, the blackest gnome.”

Many, if not most, black people have been called golliwogs as children. The term 'wog' was often used against adults. Nowadays supporters of this racist nonsense like to claim the name has changed – it now simply a “golly” doll, which does not look like a living black person. But then neither did the slavery-era cartoons of Africans, also playing on exaggerated features, which were printed in newspapers of the day.

It will always be a golliwog doll; it's history can never be airbrushed away. People of African descent know exactly what the golliwog doll represents. While some people buy them innocently, for others it is a statement: a desire for a bygone era before immigration, a time of Empire, when black people knew their place. It stopped being a toy years ago, it is now a symbol, like the Confederate flag.

Sutton Guardian readers who wrote in the thread about wanting to visit the store to buy the dolls were doing so because they want a symbol of an old and racist England. Having spoken to the owner I feel in my gut that she is selling them for the same reason.

The struggle for race equality takes place on many levels. In the corridors of power, in conferences, council chambers and on the street. But progress can only advance from the level we exist at currently. If the sale of these golliwogs are allowed to continue in an increasingly multicultural London borough, it suggests that our current position is not very advanced.

If Hamleys can ban these dolls, and the Queen can banish them from her estate, then they can be banned from Sutton too. Indeed if the police in deepest Dorset can take action on the grounds that the dolls are racist, and police in Bromyard, Hertfordshire, can seize them under the Public Order Act, then some action must be possible in a city where a third of the population are of colour?

Join me: Fri 7th October, 12pm, outside Sutton main station. Email: cllrlesterholloway@gmail.com

Lester Hollloway