How the death of Margaret Thatcher caused a song from 1939 to unexpectedly re-enter the charts
The bitter, political divisions that surround Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s legacy played out starkly in the aftermath of her death in 2013.
The passing away of a stroke at London’s The Ritz in April, the majority of the political class all fell in line to offer their gushing condolences, Labour’s Leader of the Opposition Ed Miliband stating the party “…greatly respect her political achievements and her personal strength”. Having made her wishes to eschew a state funeral, Thatcher was laid to rest with ceremonial honours, afforded a send-off with the same reverent stature as Princess Diana’s funeral, all the while austerity’s bite immiserating the UK outside the St Paul’s Cathedral service.
It was a time of mourning for the country’s capital and business class, a chance to ruefully celebrate Thatcher’s wresting control and relative prosperity away from the working class of the nation and into the City’s financial elite. Yet, conservative knickers were twisted when the Tories realised that not everybody was prepared to offer condolences to St Thatcher and express fealty to her altar of free market forces.
Much of the country was in a wholly cheerful mood, in fact. As it turned out, vast swathes of the nation had been waiting eagerly for the day the Iron Lady finally croaked, champagne popping street parties spontaneously erupting everywhere from Glasgow, Belfast, Cardiff, Liverpool, and Bristol.
Former mining communities cursed her name, one pit village in South Yorkshire’s Goldthorpe even burning an effigy of the former prime minister, and Trafalgar Square hosted the spectacle of around 3,000 revellers congregated to cheerfully celebrate Thatcher’s demise five days later. The funeral procession wasn’t safe either, with shouts of “Tory scum” echoing around the casket’s pull through Ludgate Circus.
At the cusp of the social media age, a Facebook group began organising in earnest to mark Thatcher’s bucket kicking with an effort to push a befitting theme to the UK number one. Searching for the right number, a eureka moment was had when finding the perfect musical sentiment in one of Hollywood’s most iconic features.
Lifting one of the picture’s most famous songs, 1939’s MGM fantasy musical The Wizard of Oz boasted the perfect tune to illustrate Thatcher’s rancid residue. Sung as the Wicked Witch of the West is crushed by Dorothy Gale’s arrival in the Technicolour Oz by a Tornadoed Kansas farmhouse, all the realm’s Munchkins join together to sing the jubilant ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead’. The good cheer is dashed, however, as her evil sister of the East vows revenge, a fitting analogy of Thatcherism’s dismal rollcall of ideologues announcing greyer depths of public spending cuts in perpetuity.
Amid a maelstrom of Tory outrage and liberal pearl clutching, ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead’ sailed to the coveted top spot in Scotland and only just missed number one in the UK by A*M*E’s ‘Need U (100%)’. Can’t speak ill of the dead? Bollocks.
Inheriting a dismal economic and socially fractured landscape by her political hands, still blighting the national soul today, Thatcher’s elevation of greed, community decimation, ruthless competition, and the promotion of exploitation deserve all the working classes’ street parties a thousand times over.
