Norman Tebbit, who has died at the age of 94, was one of the dominant political figures of my youth. An effective industry secretary under Margaret Thatcher, he was also the party chairman during the 1987 election landslide. Depicted as an uncompromising skinhead by Spitting Image, he was the knuckleduster in Thatcher’s velvet glove, someone whose instincts she trusted and whose ability to get things done she needed.
I remember to this day when he said: ‘I am very much in favour of forgiveness and I will begin to forgive when the last nail of the last lid of the last coffin has been banged closed on the bastards who did that to my wife’
A lot of people make personal sacrifices in politics; few made more than Tebbit. Nearly killed in the Brighton bombing of 1984, his wife Margaret was paralysed and he then combined a top line political career with caring for her, an experience which was not always easy. It was an incident about which he remained utterly clear-eyed.
When I was a political reporter on the Daily Mail, I occasionally had cause to call Tebbit. Unlike many grandees he was unfailingly polite and always gave a good quote. When you asked him about the unions or another issue he had strong views on, a pearl of a quote, often funny, always knowing, would emerge. But there was a cold, hard and unflinching response when he was asked about the latest act of terrorism, or attempts at reconciliation with those who ordered the Brighton attack. I remember to this day when he said: ‘I am very much in favour of forgiveness and I will begin to forgive when the last nail of the last lid of the last coffin has been banged closed on the bastards who did that to my wife.’
Politics is full of false sentiments and cant. I’ve always admired his refusal to forgive just because it was fashionable to do so. I remember too the twinkle in his eye and his enjoyment of the feuds which governed the Thatcher clan. When the survivors of the Thatcher cabinets met for a reunion a few years ago, Michael Heseltine (who Tebbit still blamed for the Iron Lady’s defenestration) had been stripped of the whip for his dissent on Brexit. ‘Only Conservatives in this picture,’ Tebbit chirruped as the cameraman lined up the group portrait. It was decided that two would be taken – one with and one without Tarzan.
It is easy to say ‘we will not see his like again’ but self-made men are increasingly rare in the modern Conservative party and those with a clarity of view and no embarrassment about advancing it, are rarer still. RIP.
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