The Way Forward

Some people argue against Jeremy Corbyn for leader of the British Labour Party because he's too old. This is foolish and misses the all-important point that if Corbyn can lead the British LP to become the party of progress and build a genuine mass base, progressive younger people will come through to take over the leadership.  

More importantly, no single person leads a political party, a company or a country. However useful it is for the right (and some sections of the left) to create the notion of the all-powerful single leader, it's always a team effort.

The only way to counter the enormous and increasingly destructive power of corporate capitalism and its servant state, is through a genuine mass movement. The greatest threats to building such a mass movement are the tendency of sections of the left to indulge themselves in infantile and destructive sectarian squabbling, and the tendency of significant numbers of others to write it all off as just "too hard" because the right has sucked too many people into a state of self-indulgence and stupidity so we might as well all just give up and let them get on with it.

If it's "human nature" to be greedy and self-seeking, how come there are people who not only help out those who are less fortunate, but who fight, and die, for a better, fairer world? According to the bleak vision of human nature as inherently competitive and self-serving – altruism, self-sacrifice and the struggle for a better world shouldn't happen, except as a strategy for self-advancement. 

The fact is that it's as much human nature to be cooperative, compassionate and caring about others as it is to be cruelly competitive and self serving. The problem is how to boost the former in order that the latter ends up in the "dustbin of history" along with the stratified, patriarchal order that gave rise to it. 

The notion of humans as inherently selfish and greedy is a product of right wing ideology - it justifies a world order that is based on individualism, selfishness and greed. It's the creator and motivator of the mindset that turns the phrase "do-gooding" into an insult. 

Supporting the LP in Britain is not a question of blind loyalty – quite the reverse. It's as much pragmatism as anything. 

People have a deep need for something to believe in, for there to be a light at the end of the corporatist tunnel. Corbyn and the people supporting him are shining a light, and it's beginning to break through the awful torpor that corporatism has created and nurtured, and that can only be to the good. 

And that is why the right is turning themselves inside out to damn him. The best thing any progressive person in Britain can do is join the only party which, at present, has the potential to be a mass movement to make it work for the people and, through it, make the state work for the people not for Korporate Kleptomaniacal Kapitalism – my new slogan.

The same applies here in New Zealand. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The broad left has been in self-destruct mode since the1980s. It's time we stopped being self-indulgent ninnies and remembered that the only way little people can ever win against the might of the state and the forces the state works for, is through combination. Why else do the right expend so much time and energy not just physically destroying progressive collectives, but destroying the very idea of them?

People of conscience really don't have a choice because it's not just us, it's the entire planet that's at risk. 

Even if an election is lost, every expression of resistance to the current destructive world order sends out positive messages to the world's oppressed and exploited peoples.  

Corporate capitalism stole socialism's internationalist ideology and went global - it's time we took it back.

Anti-Islamic propaganda

I'd lay odds that the people who set up the Muslim-hating Facebook page which posted this meme haven't given a thought to the historical reality of European countries' colonisation and Christianisation of vast swathes of the world; nor to the fact that modern militant Islam was funded, armed and manipulated by the USA and its allies in the furtherance of their fight against progressive and nationalist movements; nor to the fact that the USA and its allies continue to trade with, and sell arms to some of the most extremist and repressive Islamic states – such as Saudi Arabia.

No – instead of encouraging people to think and to seek points of commonality – sites like Crusade Against Islamisation of The World pander to ignorance and bigotry, and actively foment fear and division.  

I detest them. They are not pro-woman, or pro-anything, they are simply and stupidly anti-Muslim. 

I've been a feminist almost my entire life, and there is no way I condone any ideology which oppresses women but I know that you do not win people over to progressive change by attacking their religion and culture in this sort of crude and aggressive way.

The reason orthodox Muslim women wear the veil is fundamentally the same reason devout Jewish and Christian women dress modestly, and let's not forget it's not so long ago in our society that women could not have appeared in public in a neck to knee swimsuit, let alone a skimpy bikini. 

There's also the vexed question of what sort of bodies are considered appropriate to be seen in skimpy swim wear. An old woman, a too fat or a too thin woman would likely be an object of ridicule if she wore the sort of bikini that features in the picture above.

The notion of women in Christian countries being free to dress as they want whilst women in Islamic countries are forced to wear the veil ignores essential realities on both sides.

Why do women in the Christian tradition still wear hats or silly approximations of hats at weddings? Why do brides in the Christian tradition wear white, are veiled, "given away" by their fathers, and take their husband's name? Why until recently was being a virgin at marriage so important for a woman but not a man, and why was having a child "out of wedlock" considered a cardinal sin?  

These traditions and prejudices have their roots in the same patriarchal ideology that underpins Christianity's parent religion, Judaism, and its brother religion, Islam. 

It's interesting to consider why, in English law up to the end of the 17th century, the punishment for a woman who was convicted of an act of high or petty treason was to be burned at the stake while the punishment for a man was to be hung, drawn and quartered. (1) Both were hideous and monstrously cruel punishments but why the distinction? One explanation was that drawing and quartering involved exposing the body and it was considered inappropriate to expose a woman's body to the huge crowds that attended public executions.  Another suggestion was that, if hanged, a woman would wave her legs around and, possibly because knickers didn't exist in those days, the sight may have inflamed the passions of male on-lookers. 

The perverse logic that immolation preserved female modesty and thereby avoided inflaming men, flowed from the patriarchal religious dogma of the essential weakness and wickedness of woman. 

It might be argued that barely-there bikinis are a product of the same religious dogma that led men to burn a woman alive rather than risk her "private parts" being exposed to public view. 

Why else do women in most modern western societies have to, by both law and custom, wear token strips of cloth to cover their nipples and vagina when in public? 

If Western women are so free, why can't they go completely naked where and when they want instead of being required to make such absurd gestures to "feminine modesty". And of course there is the fact that very different standards of dress and undress apply in different sorts of public spaces, some codified and others policed by public opinion.

What feeds such patent absurdities and contradictions? Why do people remain so chronically conflicted about bodies and sex? 

In the mainstream western media these days male buttocks are acceptable but we won't see a penis or testicles. We see lots of female buttocks, in fact it's almost impossible to avoid them, and we see loads of breasts but we never see a vagina or a hint of pubic hair.  

Male nipples are sexually neutral but female nipples are definitely not. In fact, so bizarre and contradictory is the attitude to women's nipples that pulp magazines run stories about celebrities' accidental exposure of them. The phenomenon even has a name – a nip-slip. 

The things that offend me most about the Islam-haters are their ignorance, their ahistoricism and their hypocrisy. I understand that it's hard for people who have been schooled into a hatred and fear of Islam, to accept the fact that for centuries Islam was a more progressive and woman-friendly religion than Christianity. (It must be said that wasn't difficult given how reactionary and viciously anti-woman much of Christianity was, not to mention how reactionary and anti-woman some of it remains.) However, whilst I understand it, I cannot forgive it. 

Any dispassionate review of the history of the last century must conclude that the greatest blame for the current trend in some parts of Islam towards a full blown patriarchal, repressive and reactionary form, lies with the USA and its allies, not with ordinary Muslims – the overwhelming majority of whom want to live their lives in peace and security. 

(i) Religious heretics of both sexes were burned at the stake in England until 1677 but burning was used for women convicted of a number of secular crimes that fell under the umbrella of both high and petty treason. High treason was a crime against the King and included counterfeiting; petty treason was a crime against any lawful superior, including a woman's husband or father. 

Rugby and racism

Scotty Stevenson in The Herald aligns the racial abuse hurled at Fijian rugby players in Canterbury with a more subtle, but equally corrosive, racial stereotyping that imbues the sport at elite levels. 

He cites the All Blacks' official biographies which present white players in terms of their intelligence and leadership skills, and players of colour in terms of their physicality.

Sideline racial abuse is as crude as it is ugly and says most (all of it bad) about the people who deliver it but it only happens because (white) match officials, club organisers, spectators and other players allow it to happen.

Morons will be morons, haters will hate – it's up to the majority of decent people to control those who can't or won't control themselves. 

It’s a white problem and as such white people have to provide the solution. Messages of support from other players after the game are not enough and it is wrong to expect people of colour to take the lead in challenging drunken bigots.

White spectators need to challenge abusers at the time. White match officials need to stop the game the moment they become aware that spectators are hurling racial abuse, and white players on both teams need to refuse to play until racial abusers leave. White club officials need to revoke racial abusers' membership and ban them from attending matches.

If this happened, the sideline racial abuse would stop dead. 

Canterbury and NZ Rugby as institutions need to acknowledge the MASSIVE contribution to the game made by players of colour and take their own steps to stop racial abuse – and they need to address the more subtle racial stereotyping which helps fuel it. 

I'd like to see Canterbury’s elite white rugby players, with their much vaunted leadership skills and intelligence, stand up and demonstrate those qualities by publicly condemning racism in the sport.

On Natural Selection and Unintended Irony

Cindy George aged 32 and her three children, Pio aged 5, Teuruaa aged 3, and Telyzshaun aged 2, died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a house in Ashburton.


Pebbles Hooper, a 25-year-old gossip columnist and the "socialite" daughter of two Kiwi fashion designers, condemned Cindy George as a careless or delinquent parent whose death was "natural selection".

Hooper acknowledged she'd get "major slack" (by which I presume she meant "flak") i.e. she knew her comment would be controversial, but she was obviously unaware of just how offended so many people would be.

She first said that she stood by her view but then deleted the tweet. 

A statement, probably worded by her legal and/or PR advisers, was issued today in an attempt to ameliorate the ill-effects on her reputation and employability. 

I doubt I'm alone in finding these weasel words to be as offensive as the original tweet, if not more so.

I find it hard to believe that Hooper would have written anything as callous and cruel about the woman in Whanganui who made a tragic mistake and forgot she had not delivered her toddler to day care and left him in her car where he died of heat exhaustion. 


So why did Hooper demonstrate both a callous indifference to four tragic deaths, and a stunning arrogance in feeling entitled to express that opinion on a public forum?

I can only conclude she's not very bright and completely lacks empathy, and/or she intended the comment to shock in order to enhance her reputation as a person who has the guts to say the things that others only think.

The insertion of the outrageous and shocking to leaven the usual fare of banal trivia is standard stuff for today's gossip columnists – filling the void where intelligence, insight and wit ought to be – but the comment and the attitudes it betrayed went beyond even our modern pale.

Whilst I, like a lot of others, condemn Hooper for being an air-headed, stony-hearted scribbler who thought it was acceptable to sharpen her claws on a dead woman, I reserve a greater opprobrium for those who encourage her view of herself as remarkable and entitled. 

If Ms Hooper had bothered to do some research before she put finger to key pad she might have learned that CO poisoning is the most common form of poisoning world wide and is disturbingly common in NZ. 

This is because a lot of people do not know how toxic the completely odourless gas is, or the many ways in which it can be produced, or that the symptoms  of CO poisoning mimic other common ailments. I doubt very many people realise that low level chronic exposure to CO can affect cognitive processes, and as the levels accumulate in the body, victims can become progressively more vulnerable to acute poisoning when they are exposed to higher levels of the gas.

I doubt it's well known that some people, by virtue of age, being smokers or having cardio-pulmonary health problems, are more at risk from CO poisoning.

Rather than cruelly labelling Cindy George as a careless or delinquent parent, Ms Hooper could have taken time to consider scenarios in which Ms George was just a tragic victim of a horrible accident.

She had 3 children under 5 to care for on her own. She'd been asked to turn on a car kept in an attached garage so the battery would not go flat.  She was confronted with the problem of how to run the car safely, keep an eye on her small children, and not leave the house open to the bitterly cold weather, or to intruders.  


Perhaps leaving the internal door open was her solution to keeping her kids supervised and warm, and fulfilling the request to run the car. Perhaps she was worried that if she left the garage open with the car running someone might steal it. Perhaps she thought that exhaust fumes were only dangerous if you run a hose into the car or that they wouldn't get into the house from the garage.  Perhaps she had not meant to leave the internal door open but was distracted by something indoors after she'd turned on the ignition and was on her way to turn the car engine off when the fumes overcame her. Perhaps this was because she was more susceptible to CO poisoning because of other health problems. 

We do not know, and we may never know for certain.


What we do know is that Cindy George and her dead children deserve dignity in death, and her surviving children and other members of her family deserve our support and time to grieve and to heal.

Paracetemol - the hidden dangers

Paracetamol – that seemingly most innocuous of pain killers – is sold under various brand names such as Panadol and in the USA, Tylenol.

Almost everyone has some form of paracetamol in the house and most people take it at some time for all manner of issues – from colds and ‘flu to a hangover. It's the primary ingredient in the popular children's medicine, Calpol.

Paracetemol – along with various forms of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen – is stocked by supermarkets, the corner dairy and petrol stations. NZ is the only country in the world, other than the USA, in which pharmaceutical drugs are advertised on television – often by people who are presented as medical experts.

The fine print on a packet of 500mg Panadol pills sold in New Zealand tells you that it’s safe to take up to 4 grams a day (eight pills) for 4 days at a time but, if symptoms persist, to consult a doctor. The fact that doctors in NZ frequently prescribe the maximum daily dose of paracetamol for 3 months at a time (720 pills) goes a long way to undermining the seriousness of that piece of advice from the manufacturers.

I don’t know the number of prescriptions for paracetamol written by doctors in NZ in a year, or how many paracetamol pills and remedies containing it are bought in over the counter annually but, according to an article in the Guardian, in the UK in 2013 doctors wrote 22.5 million prescriptions for it and around 200 million packets were sold over the counter – two-thirds of all the OTC painkillers sold. 

In the USA, around 25 billion doses are sold annually.

It's a fairly safe bet that the majority of elderly people in New Zealand, especially those in rest homes, are on a persistent, maximum daily dose of the drug.

In the UK, a 2007 study found that 84% of babies are given Calpol in their first 6 months of life.

Paracetamol is the most widely prescribed and purchased analgesic in the world because it is very cheap, and compared to the dangers of long term use of the alternatives – steroids, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) and opiates – it’s considered to be fairly safe. 

But is it?

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK issued guidelines in 2013 urging doctors to review the prescription of paracetamol for osteo-arthritic pain but these were withdrawn after agitation from interested parties, notably the Royal College of General Practitioners.

The pharmacentric, symptomatic, pain elimination paradigm that most conventional health professionals are locked into, creates and maintains the patient expectation that if you are ill or in discomfort, you are prescribed a drug. For doctors confronted with that well established expectation, paracetamol is the reliable old workhorse that they think they can put just about any patient on without fear of them being harmed.

The trouble is that the reliable old workhorse may not be the bullet proof, safe old nag its manufacturers claim and medical professionals believe it is.

Paracetamol causes more deaths world-wide from overdose than any other drug. It is the most common cause of poisoning in children in NZ, and it is the single most common cause of acute liver failure in the USA, Australasia and Europe.  

Five children a day are admitted to hospital in the UK suffering from paracetamol poisoning.

In overdose – the consumption of more than the recommended maximum adult daily dose – it can be acutely hepatoxic. A paracetamol overdose that is not treated quickly enough to halt the production of the toxic metabolite NAPQ1, will result in liver damage and may result in acute liver failure and death.

It is also very easy to overdose as paracetamol is an ingredient in most 'flu and cold remedies, which may be taken at the same time as paracetamol pills. It is a common cause of overdose in children because the medicines containing it are heavily sweetened and brightly coloured like confectionary.

For people with impaired liver function due to alcohol consumption, or genetic conditions like Gilbert’s Syndrome, or who are on certain barbiturates such as phenobarbitone, or who are malnourished, or have suffered  a recent illness – as little as 5 grams in a day can be acutely hepatoxic.

Even in therapeutic doses, people on long-term maximum doses of the drug suffer impaired liver function although there is no consensus on the clinical significance of this.  But, as liver disease is frequently asymptomatic, even quite severe liver damage can be missed by physicians or attributed to factors other than paracetamol use.

In NZ, the pills sold or prescribed for adult consumption are typically 500mg with no more than 4 grams to be ingested in a given 24 hour period.  

In the USA, the recommended oral dose of the drug is 660-1000mg every 4-6 hours not to exceed 3 grams in a 24 hour period. The Food and Drug Agency (FDA) in the USA has also lowered the maximum pill dose to reduce risk of accidental overdoses. Although it is a small reduction given the amounts being prescribed and sold, it is in an indication that some health watchdogs are starting to wake up to the dangers posed by the ubiquity of the drug and the false perception that it is very safe. 

Whilst the toxicity of the drug in overdose is well documented, there’s not as much known about its effects in very long-term use at high doses. Given how many people with chronic pain are prescribed the drug at maximum dose persistently, this absence of data and the apparent lack of concern from health professionals is worrying.

A 2011 UK study concluded that 1 in 5 people who used paracetemol for chronic pain lost blood through internal bleeding, the same proportion of NSAID users in the study. Older people may be more sensitive to GI tract irritation because of a general thinning of tissue, so the fact that most older people in NZ with chronic pain are on long term maximum doses of paracetamol, is very worrying.

Also of concern, are studies that indicate the drug is not very effective at reducing musculo-skeletal pain. If this is the case, the gastro-intestinal, cardio-vascular, hepatic and renal risks make its widespread, long-term, high dose use for chronic musculo-skeletal pain, untenable.

All drugs have to be metabolised and all drugs have effects on the gastro-intestinal tract and the metabolic organs other than the desired effect. The problems associated with chronic, high dose paracetamol use may be compounded by the fact that it is often used in conjunction with a range of other drugs. 

The more fragile the person, the more likely it is that there will be side effects, and that those side effects may well outweigh any benefits of the drug. 

It’s also logical that, what is reckoned to be a safe dose of any given drug, is not a constant – it varies between individuals and any given person’s tolerance levels may change over time, and may change very quickly.

On the horrors of poaching

It's heartening that so many people are angry about the horrors of wild animal poaching in Africa and the utterly despicable "sport" of trophy hunting. There's little I find more revolting than those narcissistic, over-privileged pin-heads who travel to Africa to kill virtually captive animals for what they deem to be "sport". 

The idea of killing elephants for their ivory or rhinos for their horn or any other example of monstrously wasteful, cruel slaughter of other species fills me with grief and rage. 

So, I'm supportive of animal rights activism and kudos to Ricky Gervais who has been a powerful influence via social media in taking a stand against these monstrous activities.

However, I do get disturbed by the incessant flow of graphic images of extreme human cruelty against animals. I acknowledge that such images raise awareness of, and anger about the appalling destruction of the world's wild life – and the millions of domestic victims as well – but they do little to expose the roots of the matter and they don't help people to an understanding of what actually needs to be done to stop it. 

A while back Ricky Gervais tweeted a photo of what he described as a  "poacher hunter" - a heavily tattooed, muscular young woman toting an assault rifle almost as big as her.  

People, whose individual footprint on the planet is probably many times that of an entire African village, whooped with delight at the idea of the foot soldiers of the world's most destructive and wasteful empire using their martial skills and technology to "hunt" African poachers. 

They seemed unaware of the irony in the fact that a lot of the poachers these Americans are said to be "hunting" are poor Africans who illegally hunt elephants and rhino to feed the fetishistic desires and obsessions of very rich, non-Africans. 

As it happens, the decorated ex-soldier turned "poacher-hunter" who got some folk on Twitter all aflutter is actually an ex-US army diesel mechanic turned model for American arms manufacturers and traders. The photo was from a series of shots promoting guns and associated military and para-military accoutrements. 

The organisation she now works for is a charity set up by an American ex-soldier to deploy other US army veterans to protect African wild life by training local rangers. So, Kinessa Johns and her colleagues are not "poacher hunters" but "ranger trainers", which doesn't have quite the same bush cred.

The charity also claims that the activity helps those ex-soldiers who have PTSD developed when serving American global interests in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I'm surely not alone in seeing the irony in psychologically damaged working class, white, surplus to requirements defenders of global American interests taking their people hunting skills and hardware to Africa to train some Africans to defend some African wild life against other Africans. 

Before Europeans enslaved millions of Africans, and colonised and divided up the entire continent to suit their imperial ambitions, Africa's diverse peoples lived in relative harmony with all those species that we, in the developed world, now get emotional and sentimental about.  

People from the first world were the enslavers, the colonisers, the collectors, the exploiters and the habitat destroyers. They were, and still are, the trophy hunters. It is mostly wealthy white people who own and manage the wildlife farms where wealthy white inadequates can pay to shoot captive big game. 

We, in the developed world, as the inheritors of the wealth and privilege of empire, have a very different relationship to the wild life of Africa from that of the peoples who were subjugated by empire. 

People from the first world, having killed off much of their own indigenous wildlife, and in pursuit of imperial ambition destroyed vast swathes of the habitat of third world animals, now want to dictate to third world people how they should manage those animals which remain. 

Of course, we in the developed world, having learned from our masters' appalling mistakes, need to take immediate action to stop other countries from repeating them. 

But a disturbing number of people look at the damaged and depleted world their political and economic masters have created and conclude that the problem is there are too many humans and they are destroying animals and their habitats. 

The corollary for them is that to protect the animals, we need fewer humans. No prizes for guessing where those humans deemed to be surplus to requirements mostly live and what social class they occupy.

When Gervais suggests to his followers on Twitter that Chinese men need to be told "poachers' teeth" are a better virility enhancer than rhino horn, he's not only taking the easy route, he risks tapping into a deep vein of racism. 

The developed world grew rich and powerful by sucking the life blood out of Africa and today, the developed world – including its new manufacturing heart, China – is still sucking the life blood out of it.  

What Gervais and others need to get to grips with is the fact that if we really want to bring about change, we need an equally furious and wide spread condemnation of the developed world's continued exploitation of Africa's agricultural, mineral and oil wealth.

We need equally powerful demands – of governments and corporations – that Africans be allowed to manage their own resources, to invest the revenue from them in viable communities, food production, health care, education, housing and jobs instead of the bulk of the wealth being siphoned off by first world transnational corporations and the reactionary and corrupt domestic elites those corporations help keep in power.

Sentiment over endangered animals needs to be balanced by sentiment over impoverished humans – and the common root for these linked evils needs to be exposed. That is not easy but, if we are to put a stop to the plunder of this finite world, it has to be done.

A good start point is to look at how our own prodigal life styles, aspirations and expectations help determine the fate of these animals. 

Delightful, humorous, harmless fun or racist icon?

Dolls are objects that we have very special relationships with. We own them. We exert control over them, doing pretty much what we want to and with them. We may love them deeply and treasure them but we may also abuse and discard them. We give them personalities and names and project our inner most feelings onto them. We learn a great deal from our play with them – from nurturing to soldiering – and we often learn a great deal about the value that adults place on those people our dolls mimic.

Toys may be an emotional bridge between the world of adulthood and what seems to be a safer, simpler childhood world. Some adults never sever these childhood connections and stay emotionally attached to their toys; some become avid collectors of them. 

Soft toys, in both humanoid and animal form, commonly accompany children to bed. In societies and social strata in which children are sequestered in their own beds and rooms from an early age (sometimes from birth), isolated from each other and from the adults in their lives, the soft bodies of their toys provide the sense of comfort and security that comes from the proximity and touch of another being. 

We are not solitary creatures.

In patriarchal societies, boys are not expected to be nurturers or even to need much in the way of nurturing after a certain age – for fear they might grow up too soft to be ‘real men’. The traditional golliwog doll, like the teddy bear, was considered to be a suitable soft toy for a boy to cuddle and to keep him company at night.

It’s understandable that labelling a beloved childhood companion as a racist icon, touches a raw nerve in some people.

No fault lies with children who loved a golliwog doll but when those children grow up and defend the toy as "innocent" or "humorous" or "ironic", or if they construct or perpetuate outright lies to deny its historical origins – then, they are at fault.

On RNZ’s The Panel on 23^rd March, Rosemary McLeod exemplified the contradictory nature of some white people’s attachment to golliwogs. She described them as "delightful" and says she owns several of them that she keeps on display in what she calls her "politically incorrect basket".  

Ms McLeod’s labelling of her basket of golliwogs as "politically incorrect" indicates that she’s well aware the toy offends the sensibilities of some people, so it is hard to escape the conclusion that she either thinks the taking of offence is unjustified and/or, she delights in giving it.  

If Ms McLeod were to be visited at home by a black person, would she leave her basket of golliwogs out in display? More to the point perhaps is whether she would think it’s acceptable to refer to a person of colour as a "golliwog"?  

If, as she claims, the toy is the embodiment of humorous, harmless fun, why wouldn’t she or any other white person feel free to use golliwog as a nickname for those of their fellow humans who have dark skin and tight curly black hair? And why wouldn’t black people be delighted with the name?

I have no doubt that Ms McLeod understands perfectly well the historical and contemporary realities that give rise to and are deeply embedded in racial epithets and is well aware of the harm and pain they can – and do cause.  

However, like all golliwoggers, she contrives to separate the toy from the racial epithet, and both toy and epithet from their origins in a caricature that had its genesis, and served a powerful ideological function, in a deeply and cruelly racist era.

 Ms McLeod’s fellow panellist, Tainui Stephens, blundered into the same moral and political morass when he said that he also likes golliwogs but prefers to call them "gollies"– as if leaving off the "wog" part of the name somehow cleanses them of any negative associations.

The standard golliwogger argument is that white people who are offended by the dolls are motivated by liberal guilt. These guilt feelings stem from the (incorrect) belief that there are historical links between the character and institutionalised racial discrimination and oppression.

This white liberal guilt has spawned that most oppressive of political phenomena – political correctness. 

Far from being reasonable and honourable attempts to avoid ways of saying or doing things that insult, marginalise or exclude groups of people who suffer unfair discrimination, political correctness is recast as a rigid political and moral correctitude that tries to prevent the majority of people from being able to say and do what they want – in this instance, to manufacture, sell and own golliwogs.

The spinners and weavers of this narrative are usually a lot less forthcoming (in public at least) about what they think motivates black people who are offended by golliwogs.  But those who do express their views publicly are invariably of the opinion that black people who are offended are either being over-sensitive, are also in thrall to political correctness, and/or are playing the race card.

The bottom line is that other people’s experiences, their beliefs and sensibilities are way less important than the nostalgic fondness golliwoggers have for their little black toy.

There has been a recent increase in the sale of golliwog dolls in NZ, Australia and the UK and the original golliwog has been joined by other dolls are based on the stock characters from the 19^th century American blackface minstrel tradition.

As well as the character that the traditional doll was modelled on, the (unruly) dandified coon, the cast included: the (semi-feral, naughty) piccaninny; the (stupid, lazy) field hand, and the (fat, docile) black mammy. The sexually promiscuous (usually light-skinned) wench character hasn’t made it into doll form – yet.

In an article I wrote for The Press in 2013, I asked whether anyone would think it was appropriate to have a doll based on a caricature of a person with a disability. It is unthinkable of course, yet people persist in arguing there is no harm in a doll that is based on a caricature of a black man which dates from an era in which black people were still enslaved, and which became wildly popular leading up to and during Britain's imperial zenith, and America’s Jim Crow era.

The blackface minstrel tradition in the USA goes back to the 1820s.  It may have been introduced to the USA by an English actor but it was American comic actor, Thomas Rice, who popularised the form in 1828 with a song and dance act "Jump Jim Crow", allegedly inspired by a crippled black stable hand.

Blackface minstrelsy appropriated aspects of African-American culture and created a cast of stock characters aimed initially at white audiences, which were both enthralled by the energy and humour, and comforted by the reduction of black people to a collection of heavily caricatured stereotypes.

Other ethnic and class based "comic" stereotypes existed in the music hall tradition – "the oleaginous Italian or Greek, the boozing, brawling Irishman, the sly and venal Jew, and the ubiquitous rural idiot" – not to mention the various female stereotypes played by men in drag.

These stereotypes reduced individuals and cultures to a form of burlesque – at once hugely exaggerated and grossly simplistic – with characters that could be cast as affable and lovable or as threatening and hateful depending on what was wanted at any given point in time. (1)

Blackface minstrelsy’s cast of racial stereotypes lampooned and dehumanised a specific racial group that was politically and economically powerless. In so doing, it served the interests of those who wanted to keep things that way.

Jim Crow, the capering, simple rural fool and Zip Coon, a dandified and sometimes dangerous blowhard, became so fixed in the popular imagination, their names became racial epithets and in the post-reconstruction Southern states, Jim Crow became the popular name for the segregationist legal system. The American phrase "don't know zip" may also have come from the character's name.

The golliwog family of dolls is based on these caricatures. They were derived from, and fed back into negative stereotypes that were used to justify and legitimise, not just a segregationist and cruelly oppressive legal system, but the extralegal lynchings, rapes, beatings and robberies carried out for the most part by white people, a fair number of whom were also disenfranchised and dirt poor – as a calculated policy of division, oppression and exclusion.  

This is why, in my view, the golliwog is not, and can never be just a doll.

There have been many attempts to rewrite history and recast the golliwog as a harmless toy that has nothing to do with the historical oppression of black people, let alone the continuation of it.

There are the risible claims that the term "wog" is nothing to do with the golliwog - but stands for "worthy oriental gentleman" or similar.

Another, more complex and equally wrong explanation is that the letters WOGS were stencilled on clothing issued to workers on the Suez Canal and stood for "Workers on Government Service".  Black rag dolls – a representation of a ‘ghuli’ a desert demon – belonging to the children of the Egyptian labourers were taken back as souvenirs by British soldiers returning to the UK. The soldiers called these dolls Ghuliwogs.

The creators of this marvellous fiction don’t explain why workers on a project run by a French construction firm would have had clothing marked in that way, in English. 

Nor do they bother with the fact that Frances Upton chose to dress her 1890 Golliwogg character – which she said was based on an "ugly minstrel toy" she had as a child in the USA – in the exact style of one of the stock characters of 19^th century American blackface minstrel shows.

A very confused correspondent to the Manawatu Times, a Mr Brougham (the letter was also printed in The Press) made the claim that golliwog dolls actually represent chimney sweeps and are therefore not racist.  A letter I wrote rebutting this claim was not printed.

In Britain, the standard attire for chimney sweeps was a black top hat and tails and was thought to be discarded clothing of funeral directors. The sweeps’ indentured child labourers typically dressed in rags.  Sweeps in all countries wore black, rough clothing – they certainly never dressed in brightly coloured or striped tight trousers, red or blue 19^th century style jacket, and an oversized bow tie or cravat.

Perhaps Mr Brougham was getting confused with the claim made by defenders of the Dutch Zwarte Piet tradition, that the character’s blackened face and hands represents soot from the chimneys he climbs down when delivering presents to well-behaved children. 

That sooty chimney story doesn’t explain the Zwarte Piet character’s colourful–  and clean – Rennaissance style costume, outsized red lips, black curly wig and golden earrings.

The Dutch festival of St Nicholas is a mix of pagan and Christian, and draws on Dutch and Spanish imagery. Festivals in Spain still celebrate the 'reconquista' – the Christian victory over the Moors – and Holland was a Spanish colony.  There were also strong trading and cultural links between Holland and the USA and American blackface minstrel troupes played in European theatres.

The 1850 children’s book that first established the black servant character in the St Nicholas narrative was written when slavery was still legal in the Dutch colonies. Holland was a major slave-owning and slave-trading nation and did not abolish slavery in its colonies until 1863. (2) 

To try to argue that Zwarte Piet or Golliwogg had no connection with the contemporary reality of African slavery is indefensible, both historically and morally.

There are people who just don’t know much history and who cannot be bothered to engage with it; there are people who want a version of history which doesn’t challenge their existing beliefs and practices, and there are people who have a powerful ideological agenda and who want to write out the fact of slave trading and slave owning in the countries in which these blackface traditions proliferated. 

What they all have in common is a refusal to acknowledge the fact that the repertoire of characters of blackface minstrel shows both flowed from racist and sexist attitudes and practices, and in turn helped to solidify and perpetuate them.

Of course black people were not all passive victims of this process; they re-appropriated the blackface minstrel form and used it. Most who worked in the tradition traded off the negative elements of blackface against the positive of being able to make a living that was safer and easier than the likes of picking cotton. Some used it to be openly subversive.

We in New Zealand cannot avoid engaging with this history by declaring it to be "not ours". We are recipients of those white American racist attitudes and traditions as much as we are recipients of European ones.

And we have our own uncomfortable history, traditions and contemporary realities that we need to acknowledge and to reconcile.

If people must collect and sell golliwogs, they should at least have the integrity and common decency to acknowledge where the toys came from and what role they and other negative race, class and gender stereotypes and icons have played in history – and are still playing.

Notes:

1. The negative stereotypes and caricatures of Jews served Nazi ideologues well; and today in that most tragic of ironies, negative stereotypes and caricatures created and promulgated by Zionists promote anti-Arab feeling among Jews. 

2. Holland required former slaves to work as indentured, unpaid labourers with no legal status or protection for 10 years after abolition. (Amendment: slavery in some parts of the former Dutch colonies persisted into the 20th century.)