LONDON: Norman Tebbit, one of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s most loyal supporters, who was seriously injured in an Irish Republican bombing, has died at the age of 94, his son said on Tuesday.
The former Conservative Party cabinet minister had to be dug out of the rubble at the Grand Hotel in Brighton on the southern English coast following the IRA’s attempt to assassinate Thatcher during a party conference in 1984.
“At 11:15 pm on 7th July, 2025, Lord Tebbit died peacefully at home aged 94,“ his son William said in a statement.
Tebbit’s wife Margaret was left paralysed from the neck down as a result of the Brighton bombing.
He stepped back from frontline politics in 1987 following Thatcher’s third general election victory to care for her.
Famed for his combative style, between 1981 and 1987 he served as employment secretary, trade and industry secretary and Conservative Party chairman.
In the early 1980s, during a period of high unemployment and riots, Tebbit made headlines with his uncompromising response to the unrest.
“I grew up in the 1930s with an unemployed father,“ he said.
“He didn’t riot. He got on his bike and looked for work and he kept looking until he found it,“ he added.
The comment was often misquoted as telling the unemployed to “get on your bike” and was used by the left to portray him as lacking compassion.
The 1980s satirical television series Spitting Image depicted him as a leather clad hardman complete with metal chains, to his amusement.
Tory Party leader Kemi Badenoch described Tebbit as “an icon in British politics” and paid tribute to his “enormous intellect and profound sense of duty to his country”.
She said that as part of Thatcher’s administration, he had been one of the main agents of the country’s “transformation”, in particular by confronting the power of the trade unions.
But she said that “to many of us it was the stoicism and courage he showed in the face of terrorism” and his selfless care for his wife that underlined that he was “first and foremost a family man who always held true to his principles”. – AFP
