“Convicted terrorist demands changes to pub names: An exasperating situation!”

In today’s unbelievable news, a convicted terrorist in Amersham, Buckinghamshire is taking legal action against a pub named the Saracens Head, claiming to be highly offended by its signage.

Khalid Baqa is arguing that the image of a bearded Arab or Turk on the pub’s sign promotes violence. This is ironic considering Baqa himself was sentenced to nearly five years in prison in 2018 for distributing terrorist materials.

Baqa, who bears a resemblance to one of the red-bearded dwarfs depicted in Spike Milligan’s comedic portrayal of the Beachcomber newspaper columns, has initiated a lawsuit seeking monetary compensation from the pub’s owner, Robbie Hayes.

It reads: ‘While walking through the area I was shocked and deeply offended by what I saw… pub signage depicting a brown-skinned bearded Arab/Turk male with a turban and captioned ‘The Saracens Head’.

‘This instilled worry and fear in me since it was clearly xenophobic, racist and inciting violence to certain people. I immediately complained to the pub and requested the signage be removed.’

He told the Sun: ‘It genuinely makes me anxious. It makes me feel unsafe. I’ve stopped all the terrorism stuff now.’

So that’s all right, then.

Baqa claims to have visited the pub four times, but none of the staff remember him. Landlord Robbie Hayes said: ‘It’s a complete joke. This pub has been called The Saracens Head for 500 years.

‘No one at this pub is racist, we don’t believe the sign is racist and the name is simply historic. We won’t be pushed around and change hundreds of years of history just because some loudmouth wants to cause trouble. He’s just chancing his hand.’

A lawsuit has been brought against the Saracens Head pub in Amersham over its sign 

Khalid Baqa alleges that the ‘depiction of a bearded Arab/Turk [on the sign] incites violence’ 

Chancing his hand sounds about right. Baqa has plans to sue another 30 pubs called the Saracens Head if his legal action succeeds.

But he says if Hayes bungs him £1,850, his fear and anxiety will be suitably assuaged and he’ll drop the whole matter. Presumably the same applies to the other 30 boozers in his sights.

In short,, it looks to me like he’s nothing more than a shakedown artist hoping there might be a nice drink in it for him.

Basically, it’s a form of spread betting – banking on the chances that at least a few of those targeted will slip him a couple of grand to go away, rather than endure the time and expense of being dragged through the courts.

As for taking the sign down, I would have dismissed the prospect of that out of hand. But then I noticed that the pub is part of the Greene King brewery empire.

At the height of the Black Lives Matter lunacy in the 2020 Covid-induced Summer of Stupidity, Greene King unilaterally announced it was renaming four of its pubs due to ‘potentially offensive connotations’.

Three were called The Black Boy – in Bury St Edmunds, Sudbury in Suffolk and Shinfield in Berkshire – along with the Blacks Head in Wirksworth, Derbyshire.

Greene King acted after an investigation by University College London uncovered the company’s historic links to slavery. So don’t bet against the brewery caving in, paying off Baqa and changing the name of the Saracens Head to the Jolly Jihadi.

Nobody can be sure about the origin of these names. But some of you may remember me telling you that when I was a young reporter on a now-defunct local rag in Peterborough, we used to drink in a city centre pub called The Black Boy & Trumpet.

The sign outside reflected the name, featuring a young black boy with a trumpet. They couldn’t have made it more obvious if it had been a painting of Louis Armstrong performing the trumpet solo from Hello, Dolly!.

The pub’s long gone and, obviously, nobody in their right mind would countenance calling a new boozer The Black Boy these days, with or without trumpet.

If it had still been standing it would probably have been fire-bombed by now and the landlord and brewery charged with hate crime.

Yet far from being deliberately offensive, it turned out that the name was a tribute to an African trumpeter called John Blanke, who served both Henry VII and Henry VIII, and is thought to have come to England as a valued member of the court of Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife, who is buried in Peterborough Cathedral.

It wasn’t a racist trope, it was an early celebration of diversity!

This kind of sublety, sadly, gets lost in our deranged modern culture of constantly taking offence either for the purposes of woke political posturing or, in the case of Khalid Baqa, financial gain.

Saracens Head landlord Robbie Hayes has described the lawsuit as ‘a complete joke’

Everywhere we see craven surrender to those maniacs who want to trash our history on the most spurious of premises.

Big business, politicians and our civic institutions are all in thrall to revisionist zealots, determined to erase any lingering connection with colonialism in general and slavery in particular.

The Tories at least tried to bring a halt to this madness by introducing a bill which would compel councils to go through a proper planning and consultation process before removing statues or changing street names.

Yesterday, the Mail reported that Deputy PM Ginge Rayner has taken time off from redecorating Two Jags’s old grace-and-favour love nest in the Admiralty building and is halting those measures, giving carte blanche to councils to scrap street names and monuments without allowing local residents a say.

Which brings us neatly back to the Saracens Head, which adorns pubs across England. Critics say it glorifies Crusaders decapitating their Muslim foes and bringing their heads home as trophies.

I’m not so sure. Otherwise you could argue that the Nags Head in Peckham is a celebration of the severed horse’s head dumped in that film producer’s bed in The Godfather.

Yes, it’s linked to the Crusades, along with the names of other pubs, such as The Turks Head, where soldiers on their way to fight for Christianity in the Holy Land stopped off for a drink. But so what?

A couple of weeks ago, I took some visiting American friends to the Lamb & Flag in Covent Garden, one of the oldest pubs in Central London, which Charles Dickens is said to have frequented – along with every other pub in town.

But how many people know that the lamb is supposed to represent Christ and the flag the standard of the Crusaders? I guess it’s only a matter of time before the wokerati get round to picketing every Lamb & Flag in the country, once they’ve toppled the statues and erased the names of streets commemorating long-dead slavers and colonialists.

Down the road from me in North London is the home of Saracens rugby club. The professionals have moved out to a brand new stadium, but the ground still plays host to amateur, junior and women’s sides.

There is also a substantial Turkish community on the manor, but I’ve never heard anyone object to the name Saracens. That might not be enough to spare the Sarries, though.

Exeter Chiefs rugby club were forced to drop their Red Indian badge and mascot after a campaign by self-appointed ‘activists’ – presumably so as not to offend any members of the Navaho nation living in Devon.

Yet far from being racist, the Saracens name, which dates from 1876, is said to reflect the ‘endurance, enthusiasm, and perceived invincibility of Saladin’s desert warriors of the 12th century’.

Still, don’t tell Khalid Baqa, otherwise he’s bound to want a drink out of it.