01/03/2007

The BBC have banned the hit single War, which features a Tony Blair lookalike in the accompanying video, over fears that its pro-peace message will offend the government .

The record, by the band Ugly Rumours (Blair's college band), is currently Number Six in the UK single chart and is expected to vie with Take That for the top spot this Sunday. The song, and the video, have already featured in a local BBC news programme and the single was the '…and finally' spot on last night's ITV news. It has created enormous interest around the world and has been played and broadcast on TV stations from Damascus to Mexico City.

The BBC Radio One Newsbeat programme was due to record a package about the single today, but pulled out at the last minute, claiming that the record was 'not newsworthy'. However, sources at the highest level within the BBC have privately confirmed that a banning order has been instituted.

The record joins others bizarrely banned by the Bush and Blair Corporation, such as Something In The Air Tonight and Walk Like An Egyptian, both censored by the BBC during the first Gulf War. And in the second Gulf War a leaked memo by the corporation's head of news, Richard Sambrooke, told staff that too many 'extreme anti-war' views were being aired.

Tony Blair (the singer) said: 'I may have taken the country to war on a pack of lies, but when I now try to push the message about world peace I'm gagged. Where is Alastair when I need him?'

Respect MP George Galloway, who features on the video along with Tony Blair's (the exiting Prime Minister) sister-in-law Lauren Booth demanded that the record was reinstated on the playlist and that a statement be made by the director-general about why the BBC's is censoring one of the country's most popular songs.

'This lickspittle BBC has a deplorable record of toadying to the government. Let's not forget that only three people have lost their jobs over the war, two of them BBC employees,' Galloway said 'and not one government minister has paid the price for sending us into this illegal and immoral war. I will be raising this in parliament and I am writing to the director-general, if he isn't too busy visiting the chic restaurants in Manchester, demanding an explanation and the dropping of this banning order.'

Galloway added that he would asking the sacked BBC employee Andrew Gilligan – 'whose reports have been entirely vindicated by history' – to take part in Ugly Rumour's follow-up single and video.


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