A controversy has erupted in New Zealand over the use of the song ‘Tubthumping’ by the leader of the right-wing New Zealand First party, Winston Peters. Peters’s party is part of the current governing coalition, along with the National Party and ACT, and Peters serves as deputy prime minister.
The song was played before a recent speech that Peters gave.
Peters ended his speech with the line ‘We get knocked down, but we get up again,’ a line in the song, which was a hit in the late 1990s.
The British band that wrote the song, Chumbawamba, has reportedly asked its record label to write a ‘cease-and-desist’ letter.
Chumbawamba said they did not support Peters’s views and did not want him or his party using their music at rallies.
Dunstan Bruce, one of Chumbawamba’s founders, told the BBC that the song had been written about people of different races and migrants coming together in the English city of Leeds.
The BBC quoted Bruce as saying: ‘For this guy, Winston Peters, to then try and hijack the song and use it as part of his campaign, where he is expressing political views that I find quite egregious, I just thought that that’s not something that we could just sit back and let happen.’
Bruce said that the song had often been used by right-wing politicians in the Anglosphere, and the band would usually send a cease-and-desist letter, making it clear that the band did not agree with right-wing politics.