Oriental only became taboo in England the more that we absorbed American mores. I knew a half-Viet/Chinese guy in London who referred to himself as 'oriental' up until at least the mid-2000s, and there's also the School of Oriental and African Studies (which they're careful to only refer to by its abbreviation any more). It used to make for an easy distinction between the British tendency to say 'asian' (asian subcontinent) and 'oriental' (SE Asian) until some faggot US academic reshuffled the deck of no-no words, and woke Brits followed suit.
Oriental only became taboo in England the more that we absorbed American mores. I knew a half-Viet/Chinese guy in London who referred to himself as 'oriental' up until at least the mid-2000s, and there's also the School of Oriental and African Studies (which they're careful to only refer to by its abbreviation any more). It used to make for an easy distinction between the British tendency to say 'asian' (asian subcontinent) and 'oriental' (SE Asian) until some faggot US academic reshuffled the deck of no-no words, and woke Brits followed suit.