The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 21st April 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 21st April 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
…“the Golly on the jar” was the jingle when Robertson’s used a ‘golliwog’ to promote their jams and marmalade. Generations of kids collected the golliwog tokens needed to get a seemingly endless series of enamel Golly badges.
Back in the news following a row over their display in a south Essex pub, we’re told – at least in some quarters – that these rag-dolls are “loveable” mementos from the “good old days”. In fact these hideous frizzy-haired dolls with their bulging eyes and bright red lips are nothing more than offensive racist caricatures of black people.
The landlord of the White Hart Inn in Grays wondered what all the fuss is about when the police followed up complaints about his collection of gollywogs displayed behind the bar – including two hanging from a beam above. He denies there’s any racist motive behind the display of his wife’s collection of these dolls. He says that "a mountain has been made out of a molehill" and that the dolls are "part of our history".
It certainly is part of our history – but not one that there’s anything to be proud of. The gollywog comes from the American slave-owning past seen through the spectrum of pre-war British colonialism, the “white man’s burden” and “lesser breeds without the law”.
We have, of course, moved on from those days. The Empire has gone, along with the colonial and racist ideology that was taught in our schools to justify its existence. The racist and Nazi movements that flourished in the 1970s have been marginalised by mass action on the street. Even the golliwogs have gone. They were eventually removed by Robertson’s in 2002. But the fact that there’s any discussion about this at all in the bourgeois media shows we’ve still got a long way to go.