The set of vowel symbols introduced by Gimson in 1977 into the Jones English Pronouncing Dictionary for the representation of British pronunciation became so widely used that for two decades an unprecedented harmony reigned and an ever wider non-specialist audience became accustomed to accept that pronunciations should be presented to them via the International Phonetic Alphabet in this form. This unity was disrupted by the publication by one branch of the Oxford University Press of important reference books in which one in four of the Gimson twenty vowel-phoneme symbols were changed. The grounds for welcoming or deprecating each of these changes are discussed.