The charity single was conceived as a way to tackle the famine that devastated Ethiopia in 1984.
Over the years, the song’s lyrics have been criticised for their patronising portrayal of Africa as a barren land that needed rescuing by Western intervention.
This “ignorant and colonial attitude, external“, wrote Indrajit Samarajiva in 2023, was “more about making white people feel good than helping anyone”.
Over the weekend, Sir Bob Geldof – who organised and co-wrote Do They Know Its Christmas with Midge Ure – defended the song, external in response to an article by New Zealand’s 1 News.
“This little pop song has kept hundreds of thousands if not millions of people alive,” he wrote.
“In fact, just today Band Aid has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to help those running from the mass slaughter in Sudan and enough cash to feed a further 8,000 children in the same affected areas of Ethiopia as 1984.
“Those exhausted women who weren’t raped and killed and their panicked children and any male over 10 who survived the massacres and those 8,000 Tigrayan children will sleep safer, warmer and cared for tonight because of that miraculous little record.
“We wish that it were other but it isn’t. ‘Colonial tropes’, my arse.”
