Former equalities chief says banning Swing Low, Sweet Chariot like ‘cancelling black people’s own culture’

However, Trevor Phillips, the current chair of Index on Censorship, said on Twitter the song had been written by a freed slave.

“So ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ which celebrated Underground Railway, written after the Civil War by a freed slave, and then made popular by the African American Fisk Jubilee Singers, sung at many black funerals and civil rights demonstrations, now to be banned,” he said.

It has been sung by fans since the late 1980s, but it dates back to its credited author, Wallace Willis, who was a freed Oklahoma slave.

It became a popular spiritual song in the early 20th century and was popularised again among folk musicians during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has agreed that the song should not be banned, insisting that “many people don’t even know the words.”

“It should be celebrated in its rightful context.”