Industry | 2009.02.11
Mike Phillips: Oldfangled racism
Poor Carol Thatcher. I used to have a sneaking sympathy for her. Imagine being the daughter of the Iron Lady, a woman who was, at different times, almost universally hated or adored. Then imagine being the sister of that other Thatcher sprog, the charmless Mark. The one who is known for having got himself gormlessly lost during the Paris-Dakar motor rally. The one who escaped being indicted by the skin of his teeth for some dodgy dealings in a failed African coup. There\'s nothing promising here, but viewing Carol through the lens of my TV screen, it seemed to me that she brought a sort of lumpy grace to being a minor celebrity, with nothing very much to say, primarily in demand because she happened to be her mother\'s daughter.
That was before her now notorious quip about a black French tennis player looking like a golliwog. The resulting furore seemed, at first glance, like a storm in a teacup. This may be partly because, to a black person who grew up in Britain, the casual racism is implicit in the remark. This is still the way that a substantial minority in the population talk about black and Asian people when they believe they\'re among friends. My white friends are continually confronted by the dilemma of how to reply to the taxi driver or the builder or the new acquaintance who launches into a racist diatribe; and the racist jibe is by no means confined to the bottom of the class ladder. The same conversational style can be heard in common rooms and posh clubs up and down the land.
"Golliwog" is special, though. A stock character of Victorian entertainment was the "nigger", usually a blacked-up white man lampooning African-American voices and behaviour. Over the next hundred years the "nigger" became the "golliwog", adapted for use by manufacturers of various products like Robertson\'s jam. This was partly because of the image\'s supposed appeal to children in Britain, given that they had already been brought up reading books like Enid Blyton\'s, which featured golliwogs as comic characters or vicious and "uncivilised" children.
The point is that the racist history of the word was enough to make it offensive. Everyone knew that the golliwog was a racist caricature of blackness. In my school playgrounds, during the 50s and 60s, "golliwog" was a routine piece of racist abuse, a fighting word, and, after all this time, it\'s hard to believe that Carol Thatcher was using the word innocently. But that is precisely the problem. The racist language that many white people took for granted in the middle of the last century has been, more or less, exiled from public broadcasting for a couple of decades. You\'d have to be downright dim not to know that such language in contemporary Britain is offensive and slightly indecent.
On the other hand, Carol Thatcher\'s word blindness might be to do with the fact that she simply couldn\'t help it, that she was so deeply indoctrinated that the mere sight of a black man screams "golliwog" in her head. That is not a totally unlikely speculation.
Racism is also about the emotions, how people feel. From this perspective it\'s easier to understand why Carol found it difficult to apologise, and why the usual suspects are declaring her to be a victim of political correctness. It may even be true that the fact she\'s a Thatcher influences the strength of the reaction. Just think about some of the more unpleasant remarks made by Ken Livingstone not too long ago. But there you have it. Carol Thatcher signed up for being a public figure whose words and ideas are part of the public realm. She can\'t complain about the heat. Not unless she\'s prepared to shut up and get out of the kitchen.
• Mike Phillips is the author of A Shadow of Myself and London Crossings: A Biography of Black Britain
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]t-thatcher-golliwog-bbc-racism
