"There's no doubt that the word "Golliwog" has enormous racist connotations, but should people be punished on-air for things they do off-air? I think I'll throw that one out to comments."

I don't think on/off air has anything to do with it. If the person is saying something against company policy during their job duties then I guess the company can punish them. But if they are down the pub in their own time they should be able to say anything they want. Otherwise, we could all be sacked for moaning about our jobs / bosses.

Calling someone golliwog is nasty name calling with racist connotations, but it isn't racial discrimination so it isn't against the law. But doing it as part of your work duties is a sackable offence if its against work policy

I was given a beautiful black doll that must have cost the working man who gave it a large part of a weeks wages. That was before I could talk, odd present to give to a boy child?

I can remember being really unhappy for days after I lost my Golliwog on a bus. Perhaps four years old.

About four years later the doll gifter remade contact. Turns out he had been helping to organise mixed-race Trade Unions in South Africa in 1910. Left there in a hurry to avoid arrest. I now think that doll was gifted with a purpose.

Have you given any small child a significant gift the first time you met them. One that would help shape a life? I remember words that man used. Learned just how much difference there could be in the meaning of the same English word in different places sometime around 1950. A term for your mates in one place is an insult in another.

Turns out the politically correct are ignorant bigots. Nothing new about that in relation to the BBC. Whenever there was mention of a strike on the BBC News, Grandfather was almost bound to say "Oh The bloody liars!".

>Calling someone golliwog is nasty name calling with racist connotations, but it isn't racial discrimination so it isn't against the law.

Regardless of the law, it is racism. If you accept it then you personally are a racist. Everytime you pigeon-hole someone by race, that is racism. Everytime you use an offensive or demeaning name to label someone racially, you are an unwitting fascist. If you accept such language in your friends then you personally are a racist regardless of 'But I have good friends who are...' rhetoric.

I tried for years to explain this to a dim but well-meaning friend who insisted her use of the words Paki, Golliwog and Nigger weren't racist because they were terms of endearment to her black friends who never took offence. To me though the use of those words indicates a basic misunderstanding of the prevalent but disguised racism that permeates our society - a society that enriched itself on slavery until a hundred and fifty years ago.

It should be noted that Carol Thathcer is the daughter of a racist war-monger whose only contribution to journalism was to interview her mum and dad. Unfortunately there is no 'Politically Correct Brigade', it is a myth cast as a smear. The closest we ever got to it here was the International Brigades in Spain. It should be noted that the fascists in Spain relied heavily on expendable African troops as this Radio Netherlands article makes clear:.





What exactly happened to the tens of thousands of Moroccans who fought alongside General Francisco Franco from 1936 to 1939, during the Spanish Civil War? That's the question which a Moroccan organisation wants answered.

Moroccan soldiers Morocco's Centre for Collective Memory and the Future (CMCA) has just issued a call for an investigation into the fate of tens of thousands of Moroccan nationals who disappeared during the Spanish Civil War.

The CMCA is an independent rights organisation working to unveil the truth about Morocco's past. Its director, Abdessalam Boutayeb, has written to both the Spanish and Moroccan governments, demanding to know what happened to tens of thousands of Moroccans who fought alongside right-wing nationalist general Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939.

Dictator Franco
In 1936, from a base in northern Morocco's Riff Mountains, General Franco (pictured) led an armed uprising against Spain's democratically elected left-wing government in Madrid. The civil war lasted for three years.

General Franco gave his Berber soldiers free rein to sow terror and fear among the general public in their fight against the Republicans across Spain.

Moroccan units committed numerous crimes in many Spanish cities, including Toledo.
The Moroccan troops attacked civilians indiscriminately, and did not distinguish between soldiers, women, children and the elderly.

In her book 'Moroccans serving under Franco', Spanish historian María Roza de Madariaga describes how Moroccans were used by General Franco and the Nationalist junta to terrorise left-wing supporters of the Spanish government.

The Spanish were familiar with the Moroccan's fighting spirit through the 1921 to 1926 Spanish-Moroccan War in the Riff Mountains, and the events that took place during the battle of Anoual (July 1921) in particular lay fresh in the collective Spanish memory.


Colonial army
The soldiers - some of them forcibly recruited - served under General Franco in the Spanish colonial army. Franco's African forces were based in northern Morocco before they crossed to Spain and marched on the capital, Madrid.

The CMCA has also called for information on the fate of other people who disappeared from Morocco during the civil war, including Jews, left-wing activists, Freemasons and thousands of children. Mr Boutayeb says, "At least 10,000 children were forced to take part in that terrible war. A total of 136,000 Moroccans were pressed-gang into the military and forced to fight and more than 100,000 of them disappeared. At least 1000 soldiers from other Arab countries, including Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, disappeared without a trace as well."

Forgotten victims
Well-known Spanish investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzón is currently investigating the abuses committed both during the civil war and subseqeuntly by the Franco regime.

Judge Garzón said recently that the disappearances that took place during the civil war and under the Franco dictatorship (which lasted until the general's death in 1975) should be considered crimes against humanity and - as such - those behind the disappearances would not be protected under a statute of limitations.

In response, Moroccan human rights activists and intellectuals started the CMCA, hoping that their efforts would mean that Franco's Moroccan victims will not be forgotten either.

Moros
The CMCA's letter to Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez makes it clear that apart from the truth about the disappeared Moroccans, the rights organisation is also concerned about improving the image of the 'Moros', as Moroccans are sometimes known in Spain.

The only thing that many Spaniards remember these days about Moroccans is that they helped General Franco to seize power.

CMCA = Centre Marocain de la Mémoire Commune et de l'Avenir

What has the International Brigade to do with this? A gang of international Fascists, got up to suppress the working class, gagged and shot anti-fascists militants who had joined to fight Fascism.

Is there a list of names of those picked out by the Political Commissars and shot as fascist spies?

How many were shot as deserters for trying to go to Barcelona to see for themselves?

I was anticipating the cliched 'PC Brigade' charge for bad-mouthing a racist Thatcher.
I have never seen such a brigade. I wish there was one so I could sign up.

All is clear?

Margaret Thatcher ordered the SAS to kill school Cambodian children in horrific ways. Sticking pencils into kids ears is factual but forgotten within a generation If remembering that makes me a PC brigadier then I am proud.

Big up to Jo Brand for calling the evil witch an evil bitch.

A European fascist dictator gained power from a mostly conscripted imperial army that contained 136,000 Africans, and now 100,000 of those Africans are missing. Thank God, Churchill, FDR and Stalin for their war against fascism that left existing fascist dictators in place after the war, with more were put in place soon after. What is more social than a mass grave?

>>Regardless of the law, it is racism. If you accept it then you personally are a racist.

No I'm not! thats ridiculous. Having opinions about what a stranger has said doesn't make me or anyone a 100% racist.