Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney with his wife Linda perform in the band Wings at Madison Square Garden in New York City. A 70-year-old song is giving the BBC a headache, as it decides whether to play “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead” – a song from the “Wizard of Oz” being driven up the charts by opponents of Margaret Thatcher as a mocking memorial to the late prime minister. It’s not the first time Britain’s national broadcaster has been caught in a bind about whether to ban a song on grounds of language, politics, or taste. And the broadcaster nicknamed “Auntie” for its “we-know-what’s-good-for-you” attitude usually comes under fire, whatever it does. Paul McCartney and the band Wings had their song “Give Ireland back to the Irish” banned by the BBC.LONDON – Opponents of the late Margaret Thatcher are taking a kind of musical revenge on the former prime minister, pushing the song “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead” up the British charts in a posthumous protest over her polarizing policies.
By Friday the online campaign had propelled the “Wizard of Oz” song to No. 1 on British iTunes and into the top five of the music chart used by the BBC to compile its weekly radio countdown.
David Karpf, who studies online campaigns, said the chart battle was an example of a new kind of protest enabled by social media – “A way for people to signal protest en masse without shouting from the rooftops.”
“It’s a form of symbolic protest,” he said.
The unusual campaign has caused a headache for the BBC. With the ditty near the top of the charts, the broadcaster faced the prospect of airing the words “The Wicked Witch is Dead!” on its Sunday countdown show, just days before Thatcher’s funeral, scheduled for Wednesday.