A Semi-House-Trained Polecat. 1931-2025

 

 

Norman Tebbit in later years.

Norman Tebbit has died, aged 94, a famous name for my generation! He became a Tory grandee, despite the slight Essex accent which, in the early days, had caused the patrician Harold Macmillan to remark in appalled tones, that he had heard ‘one of ours’ talking on the radio in a cockney accent. In fact, he became one of Margaret Thatcher’s closest political allies, playing a key role in Tory politics for a generation. He took on the trade unions as Employment Secretary and, as Chairman of the Conservative Party, was instrumental in helping Thatcher secure her third victory. In his first job as a trainee journalist at The Financial Times at 16, he was forced to join a trade union against his will, thus first encountering the closed shop which he vowed, eventually, to break. Following National Service with the RAF, he joined BOAC as a long-haul pilot and navigator, and interestingly, considering his earlier antipathy to the closed shop, Tebbit became a highly effective negotiator for the pilot’s union, Balpa.

The Dynamic Duo in action.

 He entered Parliament as Conservative M.P. for Epping in 1970 and strongly backed Thatcher’s agenda of free market reforms and her strident crusade to limit the power of the unions which had brought down the government of Edward Heath. In turn, she encouraged his highly effective harassment of Government ministers from the backbenches and following the Tory general election victory in 1979, she made him junior trade minister, promoting him to Employment Secretary two years later. His Employment Act was effectively a legislative assault on the unions and fuelled the reaction which led to the inner-city riots of 1981 in Handsworth and Brixton after which, Tebbit rejected the accusation that violence was a natural response to rising unemployment.  He gave

his famous remark that, in the Thirties, when his father was unemployed, “he didn’t riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it.”   Thus, was born Tebbit’s nickname of ‘Onyerbike’ a most untypical Tory association and a gift to the cartoonists of the day. A highly popular satirical T.V. puppet show, Spitting Image, featured Nasty Norm as a leather-jacketed thug; always a bit of a bruiser, brutally beating up political opponents and fellow ministers alike. After Thatcher, he was the most widely recognised politician of his day, reviled and adored in equal measure

Hotel guests

The Grand Hotel, Brighton 1984
After the bomb.

Inevitably, he and Thatcher did not always see eye to eye and there were intermittent squalls in their relationship which probably both relished. Tebbit was often popularly referred to as the next Tory leader but shortly after the general election and the Tory win, in 1985 an IRA bomb tore through the Grand Hotel in Brighton full of the Tory faithful assembling for a party conference. The intended target, Margaret Thatcher, escaped unscathed but five died and thirty were injured; it took four hours to extricate Tebbit and his wife from the wreckage. He was shaken, virtually unhurt, but his wife, Margaret, was badly wounded, needing a wheelchair and, paralysed from the chest down, also round-the-clock care for the rest of her life. Norman himself had not lost his political appetite for confrontation, and he returned to the fray. He became the Tory Party Chairman and there followed many months of in-fighting, with Tebbit urging his boss to take more of a campaigning backseat as she was putting off the voters; a sentiment which greatly irritated Thatcher. In fact, suspicions were growing as the 1987 general election campaign approached, that Norman was more interested in his own leadership ambitions than the Tory Party

Norman is rescued after being buried under rubble for 4 hours

prospects. However, Tebbit's populist instincts paid off and the General Election confirmed the Tories in power with a three-figure majority with both Thatcher and Tebbit appearing at the window of Central Office to enjoy the acclaim of the crowd and implicitly, the Tory recognition of Tebbit's effectiveness.

But this was, more or less, the moment that Tebbit chose to leave government to spend more time looking after his wife. He knew that this meant giving up any hope of the ‘top job’ and many years later, he acknowledged that this lost opportunity, self-chosen, was a source of regret. He stepped down from Parliament in 1992 and was made a life peer. His wife died in December 2020 aged 86. Although our politics were not compatible, I always admired dear Norman for his combative nature, his political energy and his cheerful tenacity. His decision to look after his paralysed wife after the Brighton bombing always seemed both commendable and astonishingly generous and kind.

The Tebbits at  home in Bury St Edmunds, in the 80s.

The title of this blog was born during a debate in the Commons on 2 March 1978, when Michael Foot, an old Labour foe, likened Tebbit to a ‘semi-house-trained polecat’ in response to a question from Tebbit asking if he accepted that the legislation being proposed that made it compulsory for people to join a trade union, was an act of fascism.