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It was the most talked about Top 40 since Blur took on Oasis 18 years ago at the height of 1990s Britpop. But the speculation around Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead, the Wizard of Oz song which
became the focus of an anti-Thatcher campaign on Facebook, was not just about where it would chart – but how much of it the BBC would play. The tune from the 1939 Judy Garland film narrowly
missed out on the No 1 spot in Sunday's chart, finishing second to Need U, the crossover house hit by Duke Dumont featuring A*M*E, despite a last-minute surge in sales. After the
BBC's new director general, Tony Hall, intervened, the BBC played just a seven-second clip of the song, part of a news item by Radio 1 music reporter Sinead Garvan that lasted just over
90 seconds. Thatcher, she told listeners, "strongly divided opinion" between those who accused her of "putting millions out of work and not caring about the poor" and
those who believe she "changed the UK for the better by taking Britain's then failing economy and making it successful". She added: "Some politicians said it was
disrespectful to play it while others say it is because she stood for freedom and allowing people to have their say." There was no appearance on the news item by either Hall or Radio 1
controller Ben Cooper. The song, at just 51 seconds long, was already the shortest ever to make the top 10, according to the Official Charts Company. However, in a decision which is sure to
anger critics of the decision to censor the track, the BBC played another song which was at the centre of a pro-Thatcher campaign, in full and without explanation by the presenter, Jameela
Jamil. The 34-year-old song, I'm in Love with Margaret Thatcher by punk band the Notsensibles, charted at No 35. Former Tory MP Louise Mensch was among those who urged people to
download the song – which featured in Meryl Streep's 2011 Thatcher biopic, The Iron Lady – in protest at the Ding Dong! campaign. Paul Robinson, a former managing editor of Radio 1 and
ex-head of strategy at BBC Radio, was critical of the decision only to play a short clip of the Wizard of Oz track. "It sets a very dangerous precedent because they have taken an
editorial view on a song in the Top 40. They have destroyed the idea that it is the people's chart and not the property of the BBC," he said. "History is full of songs that
were never part of Radio 1's playlist but made it on to the chart. The only issue the BBC should consider is whether the language is appropriate [for the time of day the Top 40 is
broadcast]." Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead joins a list of songs censored by the BBC including Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood in 1984, and God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols,
which was banned in 1977. That the Sex Pistols song never made it to No 1 in the year of the Queen's silver jubilee – it was held off the top spot by Rod Stewart's I Don't
Want to Talk About It – has always been seized on by conspiracy theorists. Ding Dong! sold 52,605 copies, more than 18,000 of them since last Friday after controversy began to mount – 5,700
behind Need U, which had a weekly sale of 58,321. I'm in Love with Margaret Thatcher was downloaded 8,768 times. In the first test of Hall's leadership, the director general said
he found the anti-Thatcher campaign "distasteful and inappropriate". But he said it would be "wrong to ban the song outright as free speech is an important principle and a ban
would only give it more publicity". But the compromise he reached with the Radio 1 controller Cooper is in all likelihood doomed to satisfy neither Thatcher's sternest critics or
her most ardent supporters.