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Cancel culture alive and well. Suppliers leaping onto this to virtue signal. I suspect there’s a certain jam maker keeping a very low profile right now.
Thousands of pubs in the country have hunting pictures up, hunting brasses, animal heads etc. Hope the animal rights brigade don’t follow this lead.
I’m sure some (white middle aged people) will say it’s just as the dolls were terribly offensive. Really? To whom and have any of those people actually expressed anything? Of course once there’s a band waggon or a mob, the pitchfork wielding masses climb aboard but does anybody actually give two shits about some black dolls that were called gollywogs on display in a pub? Ah, maybe it’s because you have to have a degree in racist toy history to fully appreciate the offence. Figures.
Keep banning, keep cancelling. Soon we can all stay indoors and do fuck all.
And I note the BBC are too cowardly to give them their actual name.
Fuck me! People like me get blamed for everything these days.
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"After being made aware of the abhorrent display feature in the White Hart Inn, we advised the pub owners that we want nothing more to do with them.
"They go against everything we stand for.
“We believe pubs should be places of inclusivity and respect for all people, regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion or gender.”
This is the same Heineken and where they stand for:
Brewer Heineken said last year to withdraw from Russia because of the war with Ukraine, but research by Follow The Money shows that the company is investing in the country. (Russia)
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I don’t think it was the dolls themselves, it was the fact that they had hung one in a mock lynching. I mean its not exactly sticking a burning cross outside the door but I can see why that might cause a problem.
To put this back to a British perspective, do you think it would be acceptable to stick up a “No coloureds, no dogs, no Irish” sign on the door?
No dogs? Yes, that’s acceptable.
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and equating the other two groups to dogs?
Who does that? Not me.
I think that exact phrase comes from John Lydon’s autobiography but similar things were common at one time:
I think in the Gollywog case the police are investigating under the Equality Act 2010 which makes discrimination over goods and services illegal. I think I’ve said this before - the dolls themselves are not the problem and if they had been in a display case of antique toys I doubt that the Police or anyone else would have been the slightest bit bothered about it.
It’s a bit of a minefield…
I don’t ever remember my parents using the word black. It was always coloureds in the 50s and 60s. I don’t think black was common parlance back then…at least in the UK.
I remember seeing Albert Johanneson play at Anfield and the stick he got was dreadful…he was definitely referred to as “coloured” even by the media.
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If you see the public information film that I posted (1969) it uses “coloured” there. The John Lydon book was written in the 1990s so I’m guessing that he (or his editor) wanted to point out that the wording was discriminatory rather than pejorative.
My FIL was quite happy to use every racist word you can think of. Thought nothing of it. Got quite embarrassing at times. Think Fawlty Towers Major on steroids. Odd as he was well travelled with a very good job.
Here’s a hypothetical. 22 players playing football. All without numbers. Nobody knows their names. One of them is white. 2 guys watching in a pub. One says to the other, “That guy’s brilliant” “Which one?” “The white guy”
Is that racist and would it be any different if it were the other way round?
It would be the same the other way around because the description of the skin colour is merely being used to describe the player. If he had said, “who’s the honky”, then clearly that is a discriminatory term.
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The ‘No blacks, Irish etc’ sign seems to be something of an urban myth, which may, or may not have its roots in reality.
It’s interesting that it has become accepted as truth, as it fits what we believe about those times.
I get that since there is little visual proof in circulation with the slogan then you could suggest it may or may not be real,but in bold are you suggesting that discrimination may or may not have been an everyday occurrence .
The shift to the use of Black is really a 1970’s phenomenon, tied in as it was to the US Civil Rights movement and the rejection of ‘Colored Laws’. In the late '50s and early '60s, only Black radicals were using the term. By 1977 it was on the US census having displaced Colored in almost every context.
This type of discrimination was commonplace and was discussed in parliament:
A new dance hall has recently been built in Wolverhampton, and the management of the dance hall is blatantly operating a colour bar. It has a notice in the foyer saying:
""No coloured person will be admitted her"
It was even discussed in the original race relations bill as to whether it went far enough:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1965-07-26/debates/e77eff7f-4606-4995-b34e-58e468cc503a/RaceRelationsBill
I also regret that the Bill does not cover insurance and credit facilities, which on occasion are refused to people because they are coloured. I regret that it even does not cover advertisements in local newspapers which say, “No coloured”. I admit that there is some difficulty about this, because one does not want a coloured person to go to a house and then be informed that, because he is coloured, he cannot be admitted, but after careful consideration, I have come to the view that, from the point of view of public psychology, there is greater harm in having columns of notices in the newspapers week by week, particularly in the London suburbs, saying, “No coloureds wanted” than the effect of refusals to the individuals who knock on doors.
No, I clearly state that the sign itself may be real.
I have enough personal experience of life in 60s and 70s Britain to remember ‘Wogs Out’ and ‘Niggers Go Home’ graffiti, let alone the kind of language common in the playground.