The BBC has angered East Derry DUP MP Gregory Campbell by playing part of an Irish rebel song commemorating the IRA hunger strikers during yesterday’s Radio 1 Top 40 rundown.
“The Roll Of Honour” by the Irish Brigade entered the Official Top 40 at number 33.
Originally released in the 1980s, the song celebrates the lives of 10 the Republican prisoners who died in Long Kesh in 1981.
The song entered the charts after a campaign by Celtic fans opposed to anti-sectarian football legislation introduced by the Scottish Government.
Mr Campbell, a season ticket holder of Rangers FC, has called for the song to be banned, stating the BBC had a duty as a public service broadcaster not to broadcast material promoting terror.
He said: “If the BBC was faced with any other song that commemorated murder, and on occasions multiple murders of innocent people, they would take an executive decision not to promote such a recording,”
During yesterday’s broadcast, Radio 1 presenter Jameela Jamil played the instrumental intro and the first two lines of the song, explaining the protest song was a chart entry as a result of a campaign by Celtic supporters opposed to the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communication (Scotland) Act.
In playing a section of the song, the BBC followed the same policy it adopted when it played a five-second clip of the Wizard of Oz song “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” when it charted at number two last year following the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
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