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[FoxHole] The Rugby Football Union has become the latest institution to sign up to the woke agenda in deciding to drop "Saxons" from the name of the England Rugby squad’s second team because it does not reflect racial diversity. The team will now be known rather less inspiringly as England A.

The anthem, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, traditionally belted out by England fans at Twickenham is also in the firing line.

It seems to have escaped the RFU’s thinking that the term Saxon is as much cultural as ethnic in modern parlance, indicating the English-speaking people’s way of doing things. Which is probably why the word Saxons passed the political correctness test as recently as 2006 when England A was rebranded to give England’s second team some much-deserved prestige — getting into the England set up, let alone the first XV is brutally competitive.

However, the PC bar has been lifted higher by woke fever that has caught the attention of all public bodies, including the organisation governing England rugby, which as a sport has often rejected banal woke gestures such as taking the knee which is rampant in other sports, particularly football.

In August, three London Saracens players, including world rugby star Billy Vunipola, refused to take the knee before a match against Bristol.

"Though I am a person of colour, I’m still more a person of Jesus," Vunipola told The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast. "What I saw in terms of that movement was not aligned with what I believe in."

The England number eight again refused the gesture at the Six Nations curtain-raiser against Scotland in February, after the match he pointed the finger at the Black Lives Matter movement which is frequently accused of being Marxist and areligious. "They were burning churches and Bibles. I can’t support that," he told the media without naming the movement directly.

Vunipola, together with six other England players and most of the Scotland team caused a media sensation for refusing to take the knee. Fans were far more at ease.

The RFU does not appear to be listening to them however and took the decision to revert to England A as part of a wider drive to "reflect the diversity in society".

"We have chosen to revert to the traditional name of ’England A’ for this fixture against ’Scotland A’ as a better representation of our team today," an RFU spokesman said, citing the multi-ethnic makeup of the squad compared to the 2003 vintage that won the World Cup which had only one black player, union and league legend, Jason Robinson.

In October, chairman Andy Cosslett said the RFU needed to "step up its efforts to improve diversity and inclusion across our game".

The RFU has also formally distanced itself from Swing Low Sweet Chariot, despite it being an African-American Christian hymn that opens a window to the plight of 19th century slaves.