In their musical heyday, the English anarchist punk band Chumbawamba enjoyed a reputation for having an irreverent attitude towards those in political authority. Twelve years after they musically packed it in, a political figure abroad is making even more of a name for himself for his own irreverence towards Chumbawamba. The group has asked New Zealand’s deputy prime minister, Winston Peters, to stop using their best-known song, “Tubthumping,” as a curtain-raiser at his rallies and in his fulminations against the woke peril. The populist politician, though, is vowing that the show will go on.
It doesn’t help that the seventy-eight-year-old Peters is not only his country’s longest-serving parliamentarian but one of its scrappiest. As the leader of the nativist New Zealand First Party, which is currently in coalition with the conservative National Party-led government, public spats such as these usually only serve to enhance his swashbuckling reputation as the Nigel Farage of the South Seas.
Politicians freighting the music of rock performers into their acts with mixed reactions is nothing new
Peters saw his party’s numbers surge in last year’s New Zealand general election after energetically campaigning against liberal immigration policies, cultural elites of one sort or another and — despite being of Maori heritage himself — racial set-asides for ethnic minorities. And while his party went on to win eight seats in the country’s 120-member parliament, its support was critical for the incoming conservative government to comfortably rule for the next three years with an outright majority.
In office, as on the campaign trail, Peters likes to use the jaunty backbeat of Chumbawamba’s popular hit at his public appearances or else to punch home his own bona fides by invoking the song’s signature line, “I get knocked down, but I get up again … you are never gonna keep me down.” The flourish seems to be particularly useful as a nostalgic carrot for listeners of a certain musical age. Released in 1997, “Tubthumping” peaked at number six in the United States, and entered the top ten in Australia, the UK, Canada and New Zealand.
More recently, Boff Whalley, the band’s lead guitarist, said that the record’s essential message ought to transcend “divisive, small-minded, bigoted policies” of nativist politicians in the Antipodes. An “angry and sad” Whalley told the public broadcaster RNZ it was “bizarre” that Peters, who played the song again this past Wednesday night, continued to use the track over the left-leaning group’s objections.
Peters, who is a lawyer, says he is unmoved by the criticism and unworried by the band’s threat of legal action. On X this week, he said, “We will be sure to file the ‘cease-and-desist’ letter in a safe place if it ever arrives.”
Politicians freighting the music of rock performers into their acts with mixed reactions is nothing new. It dates at least as far back as Ronald Reagan’s attempt to co-opt the popularity of Bruce Springsteen’s sweaty anthem, “Born in the USA,” while campaigning for reelection in 1984 in Hammonton, New Jersey. On that occasion, Springsteen’s only recourse seemed to be to take to the stage and politely distance himself from this reverse endorsement.
On the other hand, of course, plenty of stars have willingly lent their music to sympathetic political aspirants, an early contender being Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” for the 1972 campaign of Democrat hopeful George McGovern. Elsewhere, in Europe, Angela Merkel’s campaign team miffed the Rolling Stones in 2005 by apparently forgetting to ask in advance if they could use the doleful classic, “Angie” to burnish their woman’s bona fides; as indeed did the British Labour Party with U2’s “Beautiful Day.”
Sometimes, as politicians in New Zealand have learned to their cost, any unauthorized use can come legally unstuck. Such was the case seven years ago when the National Party was ordered to pay Eminem $400,000 in damages after a court found it had breached copyright by using the rapper’s “Lose Yourself” without permission. But this took place in the context of a full-fledged election campaign with the dispute being over authorial rights, which Peters suggests makes it of a different order to his own kerfuffle.
In the current case, the New Zealand politician’s best defense could yet be to quote another memorable line from the band — offered not in the lyrics of a tune but in the course of an interview. In January 1998, the group’s Alice Nutter appeared on the American political talk show Politically Incorrect and positively enjoined fans who could not afford to buy their music over the counter to simply nick a copy for themselves. At the time, this prompted the Virgin megastores to lock their Chumbawamba albums behind the counter lest the fans — including it would seem at least one New Zealand politician — take the band at its word.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
