BBC won’t play Thatcher ‘witch’ song in full

The BBC was accused of “caving in” to pressure after ruling it would broadcast just five seconds of Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead during Sunday’s chart run-down.

Britain’s public broadcaster refused to ban the song outright after anti-Margaret Thatcher campaigners sent it soaring into the charts following the death of the former prime minister.

The BBC said it would only play a clip of the 74-year-old song as part of a “news item” on its weekly Radio 1 chart show after the campaign pushed it into the UK top 10 list to “celebrate” Thatcher’s death.

The BBC, politicians of all stripes and some members of the public called the song campaign “distasteful”. Many asked for the track from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz to be banned.

But several Thatcher supporters, including the former Conservative MP Louise Mensch, said the BBC ought to air the song. “Thatcher stood for freedom,” she tweeted.

Nigel Farage, UKIP leader, said the campaign was distasteful but “if you ban a record you make a huge, huge mistake”.

The Telegraph columnist Toby Young said a ban would be “an insult to the memory of Margaret Thatcher” who was “a warrior in the cause of liberty”.

Andrew Collins, the Radio Times columnist, accused the BBC of “caving in” to outside pressure.

By last night Ding Dong was ranked second in the week’s singles chart after selling 20,000 copies and could reach the No 1 slot by tomorrow, according to a spokeswoman from Britain’s Official Charts company.

The debate was seen as a test for the new head of the BBC, Tony Hall, appointed after a sex scandal involving the late Jimmy Savile.

A statement from The BBC said: “On Sunday, the Radio 1 Chart Show will contain a news item explaining why the song is in the charts during which a short clip will be played as it has been in some of our news programmes.”

The campaign urging people to buy the song started out as a novelty news item after Thatcher’s death on Monday but it quickly became political as sales surged.