Jonathon Prasad, project officer for Lancashire BME network, said they were “supportive” of the group as they have never viewed it as a racial issue.

He told the Lancashire Telegraph: “In the past when I’ve worked on similar topics, I’ve never seen them as a racial thing at all.

“We believe that communities should be going out and really asking questions about why people do blackface.

“If it was a minstrel type of show, that’s a different sort of context and we might have a different opinion.”

Gavin McNulty, secretary of the Britannia Coconut Dancers, defended the performance saying “they were continuing a tradition which has been upheld for over 200 to 300 years.”

Mr McNulty confirmed the group had darkened their faces during the performance in “keeping with our tradition which is respected worldwide.”

He told the Daily Telegraph: “This is the way it should be and this is the way that we as a team, in our community want it, hence all the controversy of the past couple of years.

“We danced out on Sunday 3rd October through the town of Bacup and the support from the townsfolk was exceptional and thanks to Facebook we had people watching from all over the world such as Australia and the Netherlands, even America, so this shows the support the team has.”

The true origins of the use of blackface within Morris dancing remains hotly debated.

British folklore expert Professor Ronald Hutton told the Telegraph last year that while the Morris name is derived from the Moors, the use of black make-up predated racial connotations and was widespread in folk plays.

In June 2020, the JMO had said that blackening faces is a dwindling practice among dancing teams, and “will be banned to make the folk tradition fully inclusive of all races and backgrounds without performers or spectators feeling uncomfortable.”

The organisation is also moving to prevent the tradition being exploited for nationalist symbolism by far-right groups.