https://groovyhistory.com/oompa-loompas-the-original-ones
There are a lot of wonderful things in his works that don't change because of minor edits to bring things in line with a modern zeitgeist.
It shouldn't be terribly surprising that an old British guy was a bigot, nor that some of that bigotry crept into his works.
I'm not sure why this instance of censorship feels particularly egregious, though. It's ultimately for children, and we censor content for kids all the time. We do it with movies and TV shows and music, and I don't see much rage directed toward that practice.
Is it because it's a book? Is it because it's a medium that hasn't really been censored like this before? Is it because it was done posthumously? Is it the specific content being censored?
Something feels different about this one. Maybe it's just the fear that what was once sacred is now fair game for defilement, or the sinking realization that the dam is now broken and this will become the new norm.
It's because it is fraud. I want to buy a copy of Roald Dhall's original work - unadulterated by leftist wankers.
If censorship is required when reading to my children, I'll be the one to decide how to do it.
If they want to tone police literature, let them produce their own dull sanitised works and see if anyone wants to buy them. But they know that noone does want to buy them, hence why they have to mutilate someone else's work instead.
I'm not even necessarily agreeing with the publisher's approach here, but I can certainly see there being a market for "modernised" versions of older books that tired parents can relax into reading aloud as a bedtime story, without that constant low-level unease about the possibility of some dodgy dated stuff popping up out of nowhere.
We don't know if Dahl would have been convinced of the need to make any of these new edits, because he died over 30 years ago. These unknown editors peddle their changes using his name, they trade on his popularity, rather than write their own unloved, status-quo compliant stories.
We the public are so lucky that the publishers deign to keep selling his original books in addition to their Bowdlerised versions. But if they felt like it, thanks to copyright law, they could stop that at any time for the next 40 years or so. It's ludicrious!