The anti-fascist song that was banned by the BBC
The BBC has a longstanding history of issuing banning orders to songs deemed controversial by executives in position of power. As a public service broadcaster, it must aim to appease everyone and not divide its audience. However, there should be some exceptions, and Sheffield’s electronic-pop pioneers Heaven 17 were left bemused when the Beeb banned their anti-fascist dancefloor anthem.
From the moment of their formation, there was palpable excitement about Heaven 17. Members Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh were previously in The Human League, but after growing creatively frustrated, they departed to start a new endeavour. Significant pressure was resting upon their debut single, ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’, to be a hit, but the overtly political nature of the song stopped this from becoming a reality.
Heaven 17 wanted to wear their left-wing political leanings on their chest and make their identity clear from the offset. On ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’, the Yorkshire band lamented the state of politics in 1981 and sang, “Reagan’s president-elect, Fascist god in motion”. The BBC were uncomfortable with the track’s lyrical content, which they believed could cause legal problems, and they chose not to play the song to avoid this scenario.
“We were confident [Groove Thang] would go Top 20,” Ware later told 909 Originals. “But then Mike Read got it banned from the BBC playlist because of the line ‘Reagan’s president elect/Fascist god in motion’. In hindsight, we could have been more subtle. We could have said ‘American president’ rather than identify Reagan directly”.
Ware added: “We got a panicked phone call from Virgin Records asking us whether were was a chance we could re-record it with new lyrics. We weren’t really up for that, but we still did it. We went into the studio and re-recorded it as ‘We Don’t Need This Axis Groove Thang’. But it didn’t really work out, and it was never released. There are around 100 white labels of that somewhere. It’s quite a collectors’ item.”
Despite the BBC banning order ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’, the track was still relatively successful, even though it didn’t hit the highs Heaven 17 initially anticipated. Ware’s comments suggest he understands why the BBC came to their decision and regrets not being more sneaky at expressing the song’s sentiment.
While their attempt to fight back at the political establishment landed them in trouble, Heaven 17 commendably put their morals ahead of their career with ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’. The song established the electronic band as a voice of the voiceless as Britain shifted to the political right. They later joined the Red Wedge collective of musicians who came together in a bid to support Labour at the 1987 election.
Thankfully, the ban by the BBC has now been lifted on ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’, and in 2010, the group played the track live on BBC 6 Music.
