I’VE returned to writing my first novel. Though I’m still filtering through memories and researching bits and pieces, I’ve started to rewrite my prologue and first chapter and all being well, might actually get through it this time. My aim was to stay away from distractions, try not to allow outside interferences to muddle my brain and crack on. Of course, I can’t stop my partner Tina reading the news to me and over the last couple of weeks, she’s been ranting over various pieces that I’m trying very hard to ignore.
However, one morning she read me an article from that impartial medium, you know, the BBC, which made my blood boil. It seems that insanity Britain has struck gold again.
An Essex pub, the White Hart in Grays, which has been celebrated in the past by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), has been raided by the police. Has it been harbouring criminals and illegal migrants? Has it been involved in slave labour? Was it selling illegal hooch? Well, no. Nothing quite that dramatic.
It appears that it had a collection of toys, golliwogs to be precise, on a shelf and some delicate soul had taken offence, reporting the ‘crime’ to Essex police. Now, call me old-fashioned, but if I was a desk sergeant and someone turned up at the police station to whine about a few dolls in a pub, I would tell that person to stop wasting police time and go home. Really, if someone can be offended by dolls, maybe they should stay indoors at all times, especially if the real world is too frightening for them.
But no, Essex police, no doubt scared like many constabularies up and down the country that they might have another ‘systemic racism’ complaint thrown at them, duly turned up at the pub to seize the golliwogs. At least five officers attended – perhaps they were expecting trouble from the golliwogs. There was even a mention that the Home Secretary could be involved. All this over a few vintage toys and a perpetually offended person.
We know this country has become more ridiculous with every passing year and that the various institutions – whether it be the police, the education system, parliament – are more susceptible to every passing complaint, no matter how ridiculous, but come on, what will it take before one of these objections is met with common sense? Unless I know differently, there is no law against owning or displaying golliwogs and as the co-owner of the pub, Chris Ryley, said, ‘they are part of our history’. It seems they were sitting on the shelf for ten years, watching punters come and go, with nary a word said against their presence. Until now, that is. Ryley said ‘a mountain has been made out of a molehill’. I think that’s putting it mildly.
I hope for a few things here. I hope the owners sue Essex police for theft (they had no legal basis to take the ‘offending’ items), harassment and emotional damage. I hope that the community backs them and lastly, I hope they don’t cave in to the pressure of this single complainant and remove the golliwogs from their business. It’s high time that people stood against this Woke madness and that includes our woefully inept police force, who would rather raid a pub to seize dolls than investigate real crimes.
