Golliwogs in Wonderland

Daily Mail
November 22, 2013

The offending gollywog, in a mural painted in 1936 by RH Westwater featuring scenes from Alice in Wonderland
The offending gollywog, in a mural painted in 1936 by RH Westwater featuring scenes from Alice in Wonderland.

A mural painted in 1936 and lovingly restored with a Heritage Lottery Fund grant this week found itself at the centre of a ‘hate crime’ investigation.

It features scenes from the Lewis Carroll children’s classic Alice In Wonderland and is on display in the assembly hall at Wardie Primary School in Edinburgh.

But when one prospective parent spotted a golliwog lurking on a shelf in one of the nine paintings, she went bonkers. Sorry, but there really is no other word to describe her reaction.

Margaret Neizer-Rocha complained to the police, the City of Edinburgh Council and members of the Scottish Parliament about the ‘racist and offensive nature’ of the mural.

She likened it to displaying a swastika or a Ku Klux Klan costume.

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

the-proud-golliwog-brock-little-book-no-3
This golliwog’s been playing ‘knockout’.

But instead of telling Mrs Neizer-Rocha to calm down, the authorities indulged her. A  po-faced police spokesman said: ‘Police Scotland treats all reports relating to hate incidents seriously and investigates thoroughly whenever a report of this nature is made.’

This is what happens when you change the law to allow ‘hate crimes’ to be defined in the eye of the beholder. All sense of perspective goes straight out of  the window. You end up with lowest-common-denominator prosecutions based not on facts but on the opinion of the person with the thinnest skin.

Mrs Neizer-Rocha, who is herself black, is entitled to take offence. But she’s not entitled to expect the forces of law and order to dance to her tune.

Unfortunately, the police long ago lost the plot when it comes to ‘racism’ and ‘hate crimes’.

Most of us thought we’d grown out of all this golliwog nonsense donkey’s years ago. It all began back in the Eighties when the Left launched a campaign against the gollies on Robertson’s jam jars.

The hysteria reached its nadir when a number of police forces raided toy shops confiscating  gollies and threatening owners with prosecution.

Even Buckingham Palace was forced to issue a grovelling, self-flagellating apology after someone spotted a golliwog on sale in the Sandringham souvenir shop.

How on earth can anyone classify an 80-year-old Alice In Wonderland painting as a ‘hate’ incident?

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