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Remembering Norman Tebbit

18 0
07.07.2026

Tuesday 07 July 2026 10:26 am  |  Updated:  Tuesday 07 July 2026 10:42 am

Remembering Norman Tebbit

By: Eliot Wilson

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Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, her husband, Denis Thatcher (1915-2003), and Conservative Party chairman, Norman Tebbit, celebrate winning a third term in government for the Conservative Party, from a window at Conservative Central Office in Smith Square, Westminster, London, England, United Kingdom, 11 June 1987. (Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Norman Tebbit died one year ago today. He remains a mnemonic for the high days of the high days of Thatcherism, writes Eliot Wilson

A year ago today, former Conservative Cabinet minister Lord Tebbit died at the age of 94. The media coverage was extensive for a man who had left office nearly 40 years before; even more so given he had been in Cabinet for less than six years overall and had never held a government role of the first rank.

Gaunt and severe, he was a gift to caricaturists. There was something of the Puritan about him: dour, stern, unforgiving of weakness, an unbending advocate of self-reliance and hard work. It was summed up when he addressed the Conservative Party conference in 1981. After a summer of riots in Brixton, Toxteth, Moss Side, Handsworth and elsewhere, some blamed the violence on the high rate of unemployment. This was anathema to Tebbit, whose response was icily contemptuous.

“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 Tory faithful loved it.

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Norman Beresford Tebbit was born on 29 March 1931 in the working-class north London suburb of Ponders End. The party conference barb was no myth: his father lost his........

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