BBC Radio One have announced that the chart show won’t be playing the song Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead, in the likelihood that it will make the top 10 of the Official UK Top 40 this weekend.

A campaign has been mounted to get the song – originally made famous for its use in 1939 film The Wizard Of Oz – to number one on the UK charts, following the death of the widely divisive former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who ran the country between 1979 and 1990. The decision was made by Radio One controller Ben Cooper, who commented to the BBC "The decision I have made is I am not going to play it in full but that I will play a clip of it in a news environment.” Continuing, he added "When I say a news environment, that is a newsreader telling you about the fact that this record has reached a certain place in the chart and here is a clip of that track… It is a compromise and it is a difficult compromise to come to. You have very difficult and emotional arguments on both sides of the fence. Let's not forget you also have a family that is grieving for a loved one who is yet to be buried."

Margaret Thatcher’s drive towards privatisation and the disbandment of workers unions in the 1980’s caused much ill-feeling among the working class of Great Britain during her period in charge. Her death caused much glee in some places, with ad hoc street parties occurring on Monday in Glasgow and Brixton, among other places, as news of her death spread.

Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher died this week aged 87