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Politics
Tim Bale, Professor of Politics, Queen Mary University of London

Essex pub dispute: do people really still think golliwogs are ok? I conducted a snap survey

CCTV footage shows officers seizing the dolls. Youtube/SWNS

The landlady of a pub in Essex has been expressing bemusement about the complaints of “snowflakes” after her display of golliwog dolls attracted the attention of the county’s police – only for them to be told, reportedly by the home secretary Suella Braverman, that they shouldn’t be wasting their time on such “nonsense”.

Six years ago, a not dissimilar incident unfolded in a café at the foot of the South Downs in Sussex, where the proprietors’ insistence on displaying a golliwog behind the counter prompted a complaint from a dismayed member of what Braverman terms the tofu-eating wokerati (namely me). On that occasion, however, it was the proprietor who called the police on the snowflake – even if, much to my disappointment, they never turned up in the end.

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