It started with a racist caricature doll, and ended with the closure of a business after a police raid and the intervention of the home secretary.
The pub at the centre of a golliwog racism row has been forced to shut after Heineken and Carlsberg stopped supplying it with their lager, and vandals smashed windows and daubed paint on the door.
Essex Police officers last month seized 15 of the dolls from behind the bar at the White Hart Inn in Grays after an escalation in complaints first made in 2018.
The dolls now form evidence in an ongoing investigation by the force into an alleged hate crime.
At first, landlady Benice Ryley defiantly put her remaining dolls back on display, adding a sign on the pub that read: “We have golly dolls displayed inside on our shelves. If you feel offended please do not enter.”
But now Ms Ryley and her husband Chris have shut up shop, and the pub’s website and phone number are out of action.
The golliwog was originally a character in an 1895 book by Florence Upton, who was born in America to English parents. The character was a caricature of a minstrel doll she had played with as a child in New York.
The book, The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls, grew in popularity, and the image was widely reproduced after Upton created more books. Thousands of dolls were made, including by Steiff.
Jams company Robertson & Sons began using the doll as its trademark, and continued issuing metal “golly” brooches until 2001, long after the image had been widely recognised as racist and offensive.
Mr and Mrs Ryley’s enthusiasm for the dolls first hit the headlines in 2018, when they were contacted by their local council following a complaint about their bar display.
A late aunt had given the landlady some of the dolls at first, and customers donated others.
At the time they remained defiant and argued “it was about political correctness”, claiming they had only ever had two complaints about the figures.
Fast forward five years to 2023 and a new complaint was made on 24 February, but this time the police became involved.
Four officers were sent by Essex Police to seize the dolls as part of a ‘hate crime’ investigation, in a raid that was captured on CCTV.
Writing on Facebook after the raid, Mr Ryley said people who thought the toys were offensive were “narrow-minded”.
A Facebook post on White Hart landlord Chris Ryley’s profile
“These people that call us racist have never ever been to our pub or even been in Essex,” the post said. “Keyboard warriors are the worse people you could wish for. Get a proper job and life.”
Suella Braverman waded into the row shortly after the raid, with reports she had scolded police for its approach to the complaint. Essex Police would go on to release a statement denying that the home secretary had contacted them about the matter.
The raid brought renewed attention to Mr Ryley’s Facebook profile, after he allegedly shared a number posts expressing racist and far-right views, including a comment where he apparently joked about Mississippi lynchings.
When previously asked about the Facebook posts by the Independent, the landlady said: “I don’t know anything about that, you’d have to ask my husband but I can assure you that my husband and I are not racist at all. At all.”
Officers removing the dolls from the pub
Chris and Benice Ryley were previously reported for the dolls in 2018
