A cartoon adventure featuring Tintin, the heroic Belgian journalist, should not be sold in Britain, the Commission for Racial Equality said yesterday.

The racism watchdog said that it was unacceptable for any shop to sell or display Tintin in the Congo, a comic book written in 1930 that features crude racial stereotypes.

A spokeswoman said that the book, which includes a scene featuring Tintin being made chief of an African village because he is a “good white man”, was highly offensive. “This book contains imagery and words of hideous racial prejudice, where the ‘savage natives’ look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles,” she said.

“How and why do Borders think it’s OK to peddle such racist material?” The commission said that neither high street nor specialist shops should stock it. “The only place that it might be acceptable for this to be displayed would be in a museum, with a big sign saying ‘old-fashioned, racist claptrap’.”

Egmont, which publishes the book, said that every edition delivered to shops had a band of paper around the outside making clear the content is offensive. A warning notes that it features “bourgeois, paternalistic stereotypes of the period — an interpretation some readers may find offensive”.

Hergé, who drew the story in the late 1920s, later admitted that the books were offensive, and apologised. “Concerning Congo as well as Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, the fact is that while I was growing up, I was being fed the prejudices of the bourgeois society that surrounded me,” he said. “It’s true that Soviets and Congo were youthful sins. I’m not rejecting them. However, if I were to do it again, they would be different.”

The current edition, the first in colour to be published in Britain, was released in 2005. It has been published in black and white in Britain for more than ten years. The commission was alerted to the book by David Enright, a solicitor who found it in the children’s section of Borders. “I was aghast to see page after page of representations of black African people as baboons or monkeys, bowing before a white teenager and speaking like retarded children,” he wrote.

“The book shows Tintin’s dog, Snowy, being crowned king . . . You are promoting the racist view that black people are disposed to violence and must be led, guided and commanded by white people and even dogs.” Mr Enright is white and is married to a black woman.

Borders said it was moving the book to its adult sections, but declined to withdraw it. “Naturally, some of the thousands of books and music selections we carry could be considered controversial or objectionable depending on individual political views, tastes and interests,” a spokesman said. “Borders stands by its commitment to let customers make the choice.”

‘Racist’ fiction

Little Black Sambo, by Helen Bannerman Although it is set in India, the illustrations depict a character with exaggerated African features

Ten Little Niggers, by Agatha Christie The title was later changed to Ten Little Indians and subsequently And Then There Were None

The Three Golliwogs, by Enid Blyton Golliwogs, which resemble caricatures of African men, were often portrayed as villains

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