Pub landlady vows to continue displaying golliwog dolls despite pub being attacked
The pub landlady who had her display of golliwog dolls seized by police has vowed to continue displaying the controversial characters.
Police visited The White Hart Inn in Grays, Essex, after a member of the public reported being racially distressed on 24 February.
Officers seized 15 of the golliwog dolls on 4 April, confirming landlord Christopher Ryley was under investigation.
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The pub was then vandalised just after midnight on Sunday (16 April), when it was daubed with paint and had several windows damaged.
Essex Police’s district commander, Tony Atkin, said inquiries were taking place to establish what happened, calling on the public to ‘remain calm’.
Christopher and his wife Benice have claimed they were given the dolls as gifts from customers over the years, and had been on display in the pub for nearly a decade.
Benice, 62, is now saying she still intends to display golliwog dolls behind the bar, despite the backlash.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, she said she was left ‘shaken’ by this weekend’s attack, but said her ‘position’ on the dolls had not changed.
“I’ve had a lot of support from friends since the attack, they have been wonderful,” she said.
“I’m not going to go into what I think about those who vandalised my pub but let’s just say I’ve got mixed feelings and I’m not pleased by their actions.
“But my position on the golliwogs has not changed.”
Her husband Christopher is currently abroad, and is not planning to return until the middle of May.
In the meantime, the police have seized the couple’s dolls, with Essex Police confirming to LADbible that detectives investigating the landlord are aware of Facebook posts he made in previous years.
Sunder Katwala, the director of the integration thinktank, British Future, expressed the importance of looking into his social media posts.
He said: “It is important that police can do their job. These Facebook posts are important because they suggest the intent of displaying the golliwogs is to depict a lynching, or hanging, which takes us into much stronger territory of harassment and racially aggravated hate crime than the impression some people have that they were just teddy bears and golliwogs sitting on a shelf.”
Katwala added: “Saying this is just a joke is clearly intended to be quite aggressive and intimidatory. It isn’t the sort of joke that the council or the police should allow in a pub.”
Benice previously demanded for the dolls to be immediately returned to their owners, saying she would simply put them back where they were.
"It is unreal - we haven't broken the law and there is no legal stuff that says I can't display them. It's just silly," she said.
No one has been arrested or charged in connection with the investigation. Christopher Ryley is set to be questioned when he returns from a trip abroad.
Jess Hardiman