Race campaigner Sir Trevor Phillips says he was asked to remove the word ‘black’ from book about the Windrush generation
- Sir Trevor Phillips, 69, is re-releasing his 1999 book about Windrush voyagers
- He also revealed that re-writing of books, like Roald Dahl’s, is ‘driving me mad’
Sir Trevor Phillips has revealed that he was asked to remove the word ‘black’ from his book about the Windrush generation.
The race campaigner and broadcaster, 69, is re-releasing his 1999 book Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain – telling the story of Britain’s first West Indian immigrants 75 years ago.
But Sir Trevor said that, during discussions about the updated version, he was asked whether it was appropriate to use the word ‘black’ in ‘certain circumstances’.
The former race equality chief appeared on Times Radio yesterday to speak about a decision by sensitivity gurus to rewrite Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s books to remove language they deem offensive.
He said: ‘This has nothing to do with children, except the children who work in publishing houses who want to tell everybody how lovely and compassionate they are.
Sir Trevor Phillips poses after being made a Knight Bachelor by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle in November
The race campaigner and broadcaster, 69, is re-releasing his 1999 book Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain
‘I can tell you that this year’s 70th anniversary of Windrush that my brother and I have kindly been asked by our publishers to update the book and they’ll put it out later on this year.
‘I can tell you that the question has been raised, and this is a book about the Windrush voyagers, whether the word black is appropriate in certain circumstances.
Asked where in the book, he added: ‘I am not going there. but happily Harper-Collins, who are real grown ups, have basically said “get a life”. So this is not really about children.’
Sir Trevor said children should not be discouraged from reading and feared famed author Charles Dickens may be targeted next.
He continued: ‘There’s nothing wrong about thinking about how an audience might receive something , but this is not really being done for that purpose.
‘What I am most outraged about is that I heard another children’s author say “this is all old fashioned and we should let it fade away and children should be encouraged to read better authors”.
‘I don’t really like Roald Dahl, he’s too rough for me, but the man is a great author.
‘It is like saying Dickens, who has disabled characters in every single book and some of the references would not be what we say today, “oh let’s cancel Dickens”.
‘The key point here is that books are for reading and we should encourage children to read whatever they’re reading. That is the most important thing. It just drives me mad.’
His comments come as publisher Puffin has hired sensitivity readers to rewrite chunks of the Dahl’s text to make sure the books ‘can continue to be enjoyed by all today’, resulting in extensive changes across his work.
Extensive changes have been made to the works of Roald Dahl, including the Oompa Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being made gender-neutral
The word ‘fat’ has been wiped from every one of Dahl’s books, with Augustus Gloop only described as ‘enormous’
Considerable edits are understood to have been made to descriptions of the characters’ physical appearance – the new editions no longer use the word ‘fat’ which has been cut from every book.
Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory can now only be described as ‘enormous’.
Hundreds of changes were made to the original text, extinguishing Dahl’s colourful and memorable descriptions, some over fifty years old, to make his characters less grotesque.
Mrs Twit’s ‘fearful ugliness’ has been chopped to ‘ugliness’ and Mrs Hoppy in Esio Trot is not an ‘attractive middle-aged lady’ but a ‘kind middle-aged lady’.
Gender is also eliminated with books no longer referring to ‘female’ characters.
Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, once a ‘most formidable female’, is now a ‘most formidable woman’, while her ‘great horsey face’ is now called ‘her face’.
Oompa-Loompas who were once ‘small men’ are now ‘small people’ and Fantastic Mr Fox’s three sons have become daughters.
Passages not written by the late author, who died in 1990, have also been added by the publisher to complete their new editions.
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