Latest news with #ThatcherGovernment
Daily Mail
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
How Norman Tebbit's 'Chingford Skinhead' exterior concealed a man of kindness and loyalty who carried the scars from the Brighton bombing to his grave: SIMON HEFFER
Norman Tebbit, who has died aged 94, launched himself into the public consciousness in October 1981 with a phrase that has entered political folklore, as well as dictionaries of quotations. He was addressing the Tory party conference at a time when the Thatcher government was deeply unpopular and reacted angrily to a suggestion by a Young Conservative that a spate of urban riots the previous summer had been a natural response to the high unemployment of the time.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Former cabinet minister Norman Tebbit dies aged 94
Norman Tebbit, who served as a cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's government, has died aged 94. Throughout the 1980s he worked as the chairman of the Conservative Party and led departments including trade and industry and employment. A loyal ally of Thatcher, Lord Tebbit backed her agenda, bringing in laws designed to curb union power - including making them liable for damages if they did illegal acts. In 1984, he and his wife were injured in the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Tory Party's annual conference. His wife, Margaret was left permanently disabled by the bomb. This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version. You can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on X to get the latest alerts.
BBC News
08-07-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Norman Tebbit: Former cabinet minister and Thatcher ally dies aged 94
Norman Tebbit, who served as a cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's government, has died aged 94. Throughout the 1980s he worked as the chairman of the Conservative Party and led departments including trade and industry and employment.A loyal ally of Thatcher, Lord Tebbit backed her agenda, bringing in laws designed to curb union power - including making them liable for damages if they did illegal 1984, he and his wife were injured in the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Tory Party's annual conference. His wife, Margaret was left permanently disabled by the bomb. This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on X to get the latest alerts.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Norman Tebbit death: Margaret Thatcher's right-hand man who survived Brighton bombing dies aged 94
The former cabinet minister Norman Tebbit has died at the age of 94, it has been announced. Lord Tebbit was a key member of Margaret Thatcher's government in the 1980s and survived the IRA bomb attack in Brighton. Born in Essex in 1931, he worked as an airline pilot before becoming a politician. He was first elected as a Conservative MP in 1970 and rose up the ranks of the party, gaining a reputation for toughness. Lord Tebbit famously told a party conference that when his father was unemployed, 'he got on his bike and looked for work.' This is a breaking news story and will be updated...
Telegraph
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Norman Tebbit dies aged 94
Lord Tebbit, one of Margaret Thatcher's most loyal supporters during her years of power, has died at the age of 94. From a working-class background in Essex and a career as an airline pilot, Norman Tebbit reached the heights of the Conservative cabinet in the 1980s, serving as employment secretary and party chairman. He was the most high-profile victim of the IRA's bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton and lay trapped for hours under the rubble following the atrocity, which left his wife paralysed for the rest of her life. Lord Tebbit gained prominence for his tough reaction to the riots of the early years of the Thatcher government, telling one party conference that his father did not riot when he did not have a job: 'He got on his bike and looked for work.' His combative style against trade union power led to Michael Foot branding him a 'semi-house-trained polecat', an epithet he wore with pride. He was given a seat in the House of Lords after stepping down as an MP in 1992, where he continued his long opposition against European integration. Lord Tebbit, who retired from politics three years ago, died peacefully on July 7 at 11.15pm. He was born in 1931 in Ponders End, Middlesex, at the height of the Great Depression, where he was educated at a local state grammar school. His first job was with the Financial Times, where he came into contact with union officials, which gave him a burning desire to break the power of the closed shop. After national service in the RAF, where he flew Meteor and Vampire jets, he joined the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) as a pilot. Later he turned to politics, elected first as Conservative MP for Epping in 1970 and four years later for Chingford. During his time on the back benches, he harangued the Labour Party over its policies towards the unions, at one point accusing employment secretary Michael Foot of fascism. In 1977, he accused the unions of harbouring a threat from 'Marxist collectivist totalitarians' and labelled those in his party who failed to stand up to them as appeasers. When the Conservatives won the 1979 election, Lord Tebbit was given a ministerial post and within two years he was in the Cabinet as employment secretary. He brought in the Employment Act 1982, which made it harder for unions to bring in a closed shop at workplaces. Following riots in Brixton and elsewhere, Lord Tebbit strongly rejected the idea that rioting was a natural reaction to high unemployment. He said: 'I grew up in the '30s with an unemployed father. He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it.' The Left used his quotes to misrepresent what he had said, making it appear he had directly called for the unemployed to 'get on your bike'. On the 80s satirical TV series Spitting Image, he was represented as a leather-clad bovver boy, complete with metal chains. He was said to have enjoyed his representation. Lord Tebbit never dropped his accent, and it was said that Harold Macmillan, the patrician former Tory prime minister, once remarked of him: 'Heard a chap on the radio this morning talking with a cockney accent. They tell me he is one of Her Majesty's ministers'. After the 1983 election victory, he was moved to the trade and industry department following Cecil Parkinson's resignation over a sex scandal. His main success in this position was the privatisation of British Telecom. In October 1984, Lord Tebbit was caught up in one of the defining events of the Thatcher era – the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton at 2.54am on the morning of the final day of the Tory party conference. Five people died in the attempt to assassinate the prime minister and her Cabinet by placing a long-delay time bomb on the sixth floor of the seaside hotel. It was the height of the Troubles, and Lady Thatcher had made it plain that she would never give in to Republican demands to withdraw from Northern Ireland. The explosion missed killing the premier by minutes: her bathroom was completely wrecked. Lord Tebbit and his wife were in bed on the second floor, and the force of the blast sent their bed tumbling two floors down into the foyer. For four long hours, firefighters on ladders struggled to rescue them from a tiny gap, during which time he and his wife held each other's hands and talked to each other in the eerie blackness. Millions watched on breakfast TV as his feet finally appeared amid the rubble. Finally he was carried out in his pyjamas, covered in dust, and taken to hospital. Although he survived with a broken collar bone and broken ribs, his wife Margaret was left wheelchair-bound for the rest of her life. She died in 2020. Famously, Lady Thatcher vowed the conference would go on despite the attack: it opened as normal in the morning and she made a memorable speech at which she said: 'Democracy will prevail'. Chillingly, the IRA put out a statement, saying: 'Today we were unlucky, but remember we have only to be lucky once, you will have to be lucky always.' While Lord Tebbit was a keen supporter of Lady Thatcher, they briefly fell out during his time as Tory party chairman from 1985 to 1987, when he presented her polling which found that her 'combative virtues were being received as vices: her determination was perceived as stubbornness, her single-mindedness as inflexibility, and her strong will as an inability to listen'. Lord Tebbit and his chief of staff Michael Dobbs, who went on to write House of Cards, told her this was becoming known as the 'TBW factor': 'That Bloody Woman'. They recommended the Prime Minister take a lower profile in the forthcoming general election. She refused. Making extensive use of advertisers Saatchi and Saatchi, Lord Tebbit ran the Tory election campaign. He argued with Lady Thatcher and her acolyte Lord Young, who took him by the lapels and told him: 'We're about to lose this f---ing election.' The Conservatives won with a landslide majority, but Lord Tebbit decided to leave the Cabinet so he could care for his wife. Even on the back benches, he never strayed far from the headlines. In 1990, he proposed what became known as the 'Tebbit test', when he argued that whether ethnic minorities supported the England cricket team rather than the country of their heritage was a mark of their Britishness. Lady Thatcher offered him a job in the Cabinet after Geoffrey Howe's resignation, but he turned her down for the sake of his wife. He was one of her most vocal supporters during the leadership contest against Michael Heseltine, and urged her to fight to the very end. When she decided to step down, he helped her write the era-defining speech she made in a confidence debate the next day. Lord Tebbit briefly thought of standing for the leadership, but in the end he backed John Major. He stepped down as an MP in 1992, handing over his seat to future Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith. He sat in the Lords as Barron Tebbit of Chingford. In future years, he turned against Mr Major, supporting campaigns to leave the European Union and even backing John Redwood when he stood against him. Lord Tebbit went on to write for newspapers including The Telegraph and retired from the House of Lords in March 2022.
