Paul Jones was an atheist at the time of making this film which is set in a fictional UK controlled by a Christian dictatorship. Ironically Jones became a born again Christian in the mid 1980s.
The government of former GDR, also known as East Germany, used this movie as anti-capitalism-propaganda and anti-beat-and-rock-music-propaganda. The movie was a huge success in the GDR but most teenagers went there because of the songs.
Director Peter Watkins said, that this movie served partly as an inspiration for A Clockwork Orange (1971).