The BBC Trust has rejected a complaint about Radio 1's decision to cut down Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead, which hit number 2 in the charts following the death of Margaret Thatcher, describing it as an inappropriate "celebration of death".
The 74-year-old song, which first appeared in the soundtrack for the Wizard of Oz film, made a surprise chart entry in April as a form of a protest by critics of the late Conservative prime minister.
Radio 1 elected to play just 7 seconds of the 51-second song, preceding it with a Newsbeat story explaining the context, following an intervention by then newly arrived BBC director general Tony Hall.
A complainant to the corporation argued that playing a truncated version of just one song was a breach of the BBC's guidelines on censorship and impartiality – particularly given a song titled I'm in Love with Margaret Thatcher was played in full – and that the track itself did not carry a political message.
The BBC Trust's editorial standards committee rejected the complaint, saying that the song did have the "capacity to cause offence" because it had been widely publicised as a way of giving voice to "anti-Thatcher feelings".
Radio 1's chart show was likely to be criticised whatever decision was taken over airing the song, the ESC noted.
"Aside from whether or not people had bought the song in order to express anti-Thatcher political sentiments, which listeners may or may not agree with, the song in question was clearly a celebration of death," said the ESC.
"Although it was not linked with to any real person when written, the committee believed that the song had clearly and unarguably gained association with Lady Thatcher."
The ESC said that it was "therefore legitimate" for the BBC to consider how it might cause offence, and that contextualising the issue with a Newsbeat story was the right course to "meet the requirements of due impartiality while mitigating the risk of gratuitous offence".