Norman Tebbit was a giant among Conservative politicians of the late twentieth century. His image on Spitting Image as the ‘Chingford Skinhead’ belied the reality that he was an immensely kind, softly spoken man, who sadly never reached his full political potential. Had he not been so severely injured in the IRA bomb attack on the Conservative Conference in 1984, he would undoubtedly been a serious contender to succeed Margaret Thatcher in 1990. Indeed, I know he thought about running, but his devotion to his beloved wife Margaret meant that he felt he had no alternative but to stand aside. Margaret was made a tetraplegic on that horrific night and there was a big part of Norman than blamed himself for the fact that she was to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Had he not gone into politics, had he not been at the conference. What if, what if. He went through some very dark moments in the years that followed. He remained in the Cabinet but stood down after the 1987 election so he could devote more time to looking after the love of his life.
He had been an outstanding cabinet minister, first at Employment and then at Trade & Industry. His time as party chairman was a less happy period and during the fractious 1987 election campaign he nearly came to physical blows with his co-chairman, Lord Young. During the campaign Margaret Thatcher started to distrust his judgement and his motives, although relations would be repaired in the ensuing years.
I remember a barnstormer of a speech with Norman gave at the 1994 party conference on Europe. He gave the speech from the floor and railed against John Major’s European policy, with foreign secretary Douglas Hurd looking on from the platform above. I was part of several standing ovations he received from the enthralled party faithful.
I only did one extended interview with Norman, back in 2014, which you will be able to hear on the Iain Dale All Talk podcast tomorrow. I remember being quite nervous about doing it as I didn’t know him well. I also remember him having the limpest handshake, I’d ever experienced, which rather disappointed me. I was expecting a firm grip.
My impression was that after he left the Commons in 1992 he fell out of love with politics. He loathed the Blair government but as the years went on, his interventions in the House of Lords became less and ess frequent. He always, knew, however, how to make a headline and was always up for a pithy quote. His words still counted.
They don’t make them like Norman Tebbit anymore. He was a working class lad, who became an airline pilot, and indeed at one time was a trade union representative for Balpa, the airline pilots trade union.
Some Tory grandees looked down on him, but he was a man at ease with himself. His greatest friend in politics was Cecil Parkinson and somewhat bizarrely, he was always on good personal terms with Michael Heseltine, although he made many disparaging comments about him in public.
Norman Tebbit provides us with one of the great political counterfactuals. If the Brighton Bomb hadn’t detonated, might he have become prime minister in 1990, or perhaps even earlier? We shall never know.