A UK pub that was reported for hate crimes before having its 20-strong golliwog collection seized by police has been banned by the Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA)from receiving any awards or being featured in its Good Beer Guide.
Owners of The White Hart Inn will also reportedly be probed by police regarding far-right Facebook posts after license holder Christopher Ryley appeared to joke about lynchings in the US alongside an image of the dolls.
In a 2016 Facebook post, Ryley uploaded an image of the dolls hanging from the pub’s bar with the caption: “We have our golliwogs, yaay.”
Commenting underneath the post, his wife, Benice Ryley, asked: “Are you sure this is legal. lol” before Ryley replied: “They used to hang them in Mississippi years ago.” She responded: “Behave.”
Essex police confiscated the dolls over the Easter bank holiday weekend after receiving a complaint about an alleged crime. The pub’s landlords then shocked the public by replacing the offensive dolls with other golliwogs they had in their collection.
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Now, CAMRA has released a statement saying it found it “baffling” that the pub – which had previously won the South West Essex Camra Pub Of The Year awards – had chosen to display the dolls which are “offensive to many.”
In a thread of tweets, it then added it had instructed its South West Essex local “not to consider the White Hart, Grays, Essex, for future awards, or inclusion in our Good Beer Guide, while these discriminatory dolls continue to be on display”.
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It also revealed it had added a line to the entry in its current guide describing the pub, which said: “Note this pub has chosen to display items that are considered by many to be offensive.”
It continued: “We have had clear national guidelines in place since 2018 that no pub should be considered for an award if it displays offensive or discriminatory material on the premises, or on social media associated with the pub.
CAMRA believes pubs should be welcoming and inclusive places and it's baffling that any pub would choose to discriminate against customers or potential customers by continuing to display offensive material. 🧵👇
“We are currently discussing why this guidance was seemingly ignored by our South West Essex branch & instructing them not to consider the White Hart, Grays, Essex, for future awards, or inclusion in our Good Beer Guide, while these discriminatory dolls continue to be on display.”
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However, Mr Ryley in response told the BBC that “a mountain has been made out of a molehill,” claiming that the pub had received more support than abuse and was “still open and trading”, whilst Beth Ryley revealed that she had displayed the dolls in the pub for around a decade.
Other Facebook posts of concern from Mr Ryley also show him posting support for ‘White Lives Matter’ and asking ‘When is White History Month please. Anybody know?’
In another post, a golliwog has been uploaded alongside the caption: ‘Hello Great Britain Am I Allowed Back In?’
To date, no one has been arrested or charged by police in connection with the investigation but The Guardian understands that officers intend to question landlord Chris when he returns from the family’s home in Turkey next month.
It is believed the investigation is currently looking at whether there was an intention to cause offense by displaying the dolls, with another line of inquiry investigating if Ryley’s Facebook posts contravene the 1988 Malicious Communications Act.
This Manchester bar serves a bottomless cheese fondue with endless beer and wine
Georgina Pellant
There’s a bar in Manchester serving a bottomless cheese fondue with endless wine and beer, and it honestly sounds like the perfect treat.
While it might scream cosy winter night in, with a huge outdoor terrace, The Mews is also a firm favourite during the summer months.
Add in a board of melt-in-the-mouth charcuterie, springy pieces of garlic sourdough and a host of crunchy cheese biscuits, and you’ve got yourself the ideal afternoon if you ask us.
But there’s more. Alongside all that cheese and meat and bread, included in the price of The Mews’ bottomless fondue, cheese lovers can also enjoy 90 minutes of non-stop drinks.
Bottomless cheese fondue at The Mews on Deansgate in Manchester. (Credit: The Manc Eats)
Costing £37.50 each, included in the deal is a huge pot of melted Italian Fontina cheese served with homemade garlic croutons, sourdough crackers, and slices of British charcuterie.
You’ll also get to enjoy an hour and a half of endless pints of house pilsner and carafes of red or white wine to enjoy alongside.
Serving up to six people, the bottomless cheese fondue is available only when you pre-book, so make sure to get in touch ahead of your visit to let The Mews know that you’re coming.
If you’re not on the sauce, you can opt for the cheese fondue alone. Without the booze, it’s quite a bit cheaper at £25 for one, and £2.50 on top for any additional people who want to get stuck in.
Housed up on Deansgate Mews, just behind the main hustle and bustle of Deansgate, there’s plenty of space inside as well as a large, secluded terrace that is quite the suntrap (when the Manchester sun is shining).
‘The average cost of a pint’ in the UK by region, according to the latest data
Danny Jones
Does it feel like pints keep getting more and more expensive almost every week at this point? Yes. Yes, it does, and while you can’t expect a city as big as Manchester to be one of the cheapest places to get one in the UK, we do often wonder how it compares to other parts of the country.
Well, as it happens, someone has recently crunched the numbers for us across the nation, breaking down which regions pay the most and the least for their pints.
The data has been examined by business management consultancy firm, CGA Strategy, using artificial intelligence and information from the latest Retail Price Index figures to find out what the ‘average cost of a pint’ is down south, up North and everywhere in between.
While the latest statistics provided by the group aren’t granular enough to educate us on Greater Manchester’s pint game exactly, we can show you how our particular geographic region is looking on the leaderboard at the moment.
That’s right, we Mancunians and the rest of the North West are technically joint mid-table when it comes to the lowest average cost of a pint, sharing the places from 3rd to 8th – according to CGA, anyway.
Powered by consumer intelligence company, NIQ (NielsenIQ) – who also use AI and the latest technology to deliver their insights – we can accept it might seem like it’s been a while since you’ve paid that little for a pint, especially in the city centre, but these are the stats they have published.
Don’t shoot the messenger, as they say; unless, of course, they’re trying to rob you blind for a bev. Fortunately, we’ve turned bargain hunting at Manchester bars into a sport at this point.
We might not boast the lowest ‘average’ pint cost in the UK, but we still have some bloody good places to keep drinking affordable.
London tops the charts (pretends to be shocked)
While some of you may have scratched your eyes at the supposed average pint prices here in the North West, it won’t surprise any of you to see that London leads the way when it came to the most expensive pint when it came to average cost in the UK.
To be honest, £5.44 doesn’t just sound cheap but virtually unheard of these days.
CGA has it that the average cost of a beer in the British capital is actually down 15p from its price last September, but as we all know, paying upwards of £7 for a pint down that end of the country is pretty much par for the course the closer you get to London.
Yet more reason you can be glad you live around here, eh? And in case you thought you were leaving this article with very little, think again…
Georgina Pellant -
14th April 2023 
