Norman Tebbit

The Rt Hon. the Lord Tebbit
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
In office 2 September 1985 – 13 June 1987
Preceded by	Alexander Ruthven
Succeeded by	Kenneth Clarke
Chairman of the Conservative Party
In office 2 September 1985 – 13 June 1987
Preceded by	John Gummer
Succeeded by	Peter Brooke
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry
In office 11 October 1983 – 2 September 1985
Preceded by	Cecil Parkinson
Succeeded by	Leon Brittan
Secretary of State for Employment
In office 14 September 1981 – 16 October 1983
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by	James Prior
Succeeded by	Tom King
Personal details
Born	(1931-03-29) March 29, 1931 North London UK
Political party	Conservative

Norman Beresford Tebbit, Baron Tebbit, CH, PC (born 29 March 1931) is a British Conservative politician and former Member of Parliament (MP) for Chingford, who was born in Southgate in Enfield. His wife became permanently wheelchair-bound after the Provisional Irish Republican Army bombing of the 1984 Conservative Party conference in Brighton.

Early life

Born into a working class family, Tebbit went to Edmonton County School, an academically selective state school in north London. He was then a journalist for the Financial Times before serving with the Royal Air Force, flying Meteor and Vampire jets during four years of National Service. On leaving the RAF he joined BOAC in 1953 as a pilot, during which time he was an official in the British Air Line Pilots Association. He was elected MP for Epping in 1970 and then for Chingford in 1974. He is recorded as an MP member of the Conservative Monday Club in 1970 .

Member of Parliament

Tebbit was a close ally of Margaret Thatcher and served as her Secretary of State for Employment, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade (October 1983 - September 1985), as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and as party chairman (1985 - 1987).

In 1975 six men (the 'Ferrybridge Six') were dismissed from their jobs because of the introduction of the closed shop and were denied unemployment benefit. The then Secretary of State for Employment Michael Foot said that anyone who "declines to fall in with new conditions of employment...may well be considered to have brought about his own dismissal". Tebbit then accused Foot of "pure undiluted fascism and [it] left Foot open to accusations of being an "opponent of freedom and liberty". Foot once labelled Tebbit a "semi-house-trained polecat".[2]

After the Conservatives won the general election of 1979 Tebbit was appointed Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Trade.

In the September 1981 Cabinet reshuffle Mrs. Thatcher appointed Tebbit as Employment Secretary. This was seen as a shift to a 'tougher' approach to the trade unions than had been the case under Tebbit's predecessor, James Prior. Tebbit had previously likened Prior's conciliatory approach to the trade unions in a speech as 'the morality of Pétain and Laval'. Tebbit introduced the Employment Act 1982 which raised the level of compensation for those unfairly dismissed from a closed shop and introduced the requirement that where a closed shop operated it could only stay if 85% of workers voted for it in periodic ballots. It also removed trade union immunity from civil action for damages if it authorised illegal industrial action. In his memoirs Tebbit said that the 1982 Act was his "greatest achievement in Government".

In the aftermath of urban riots (Handsworth riots and Brixton riot) in the summer of 1981, Tebbit responded to a suggestion that the rioting was caused by unemployment by saying:

I grew up in the 1930s with an unemployed father. He did not riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he went on looking until he found it, blah blah fucking blah.

This exchange was the origin of the attribution to Tebbit of the slogan On yer bike!. Tebbit is often misquoted as saying directly to the unemployed "get on your bike and look for work" as a consequence of his speech. He was always portrayed as a sinister, leather-clad bovverboy by the satirical TV puppet show, Spitting Image.

In the post-election October 1983 reshuffle Tebbit was moved from Employment to become Trade and Industry Secretary to replace Cecil Parkinson, who had resigned. Thatcher had actually wanted Tebbit to become Home Secretary but William Whitelaw vetoed this. He was seriously injured in the IRA's bombing of the Grand Hotel, Brighton during the 1984 Conservative Party conference and his wife, Margaret, was permanently disabled.

Tebbit was appointed Chairman of the Conservative Party in 1985 along with being Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster as Thatcher wanted to keep him in the Cabinet. During the Westland affair Tebbit was against the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation taking over Westland Aircraft. In 1986 Tebbit was against the American bombing raid of Libya from British bases and of Mrs. Thatcher's refusal to fully consult the Cabinet on the matter. However he did criticise the BBC for its supposed biased reporting of the raid. During the same year he disbanded the Federation of Conservative Students because he thought it was being taken over by people who he thought were too libertarian and because they called for Harold Macmillan to be tried as a war criminal. At the 1986 Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth Tebbit came up with that year's Party slogan—'Our Next Move Forward'. For quite a while he was seen as Thatcher's natural successor as Party leader.

On the 6 January 1987 the journalist Hugo Young published a quote attributed to Tebbit in The Guardian newspaper. Tebbit's Chief of Staff, Michael Dobbs, responded by writing a letter to the newspaper citing Young's dislike of Tebbit, adding "Perhaps this explains the invention of the quotation he [Mr. Young] attributed to Mr. Tebbit". The quote was "No-one with a conscience votes Conservative". Before this letter was published, however, the words "the invention of" had been removed. Despite publishing this letter The Guardian subsequently repeated the quote and Young again attributed it to him in a letter to The Spectator. Tebbit feared that if no action was taken against The Guardian the Labour Party would use this quote against the Conservatives in the upcoming general election. With Thatcher's consent Tebbit threatened the newspaper with legal action if they did not retract the quotation and apologise to Tebbit. The case continued until 1988 when the The Guardian apologised, published a retraction and paid £14,000 in libel damages in an out-of-court settlement.

During the 1987 general election Tebbit and Saatchi and Saatchi spearheaded the Conservative campaign, focusing on the economy and defence. During the election campaign however Tebbit and Thatcher argued. A few months after the general election, Tebbit stood down as Party Chairman to spend more time with his disabled wife. In late 1987 and 1988, Tebbit formed a temporary alliance with Michael Heseltine in campaigning for the abolition of the Inner London Education Authority, which they succeeded in doing through a back-bench amendment.

In 1990 he proposed the "Cricket test", also known as the "Tebbit Test", where he suggested that people from ethnic minorities in Britain should not be considered truly British until they supported the England cricket team, as opposed to the country of their or their ancestors' birth. In August 2005, after the 7 July 2005 London bombings, which were carried out by three young men of Pakistani descent and one of Jamaican descent, Tebbit claimed vindication for these views.

After Geoffrey Howe's resignation from the government in November 1990 Mrs. Thatcher asked Tebbit to return to the Cabinet to be Education Secretary but he refused on the grounds that he was looking after his wife. During the 1990 Conservative Party leadership election Tebbit was on Mrs. Thatcher's campaign team with the job of assessing her support amongst Conservative MPs. During the campaign he held a press conference outside Heseltine's house in Belgravia. Tebbit wanted to stand, but never did. When Thatcher resigned Tebbit switched his support to John Major.

Tebbit had formally accepted an invitation to speak at a Conservative Monday Club dinner in June 1991 on 'the Future of Conservatism'. However he sent a message to the Charing Cross Hotel, just one hour prior to the dinner saying that the Government Whips were demanding he (and all other Conservative MPs in the House) stay and vote on the Dangerous Dog Bill. It was the only occasion in the Club's history where someone had failed to honour their engagement.

A Peerage and after

Tebbit decided not to stand in the 1992 election, in order to devote more time to caring for his disabled wife. After the election he was granted a life peerage and entered the House of Lords as Baron Tebbit, of Chingford in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. His former seat of Chingford was aggregated with Woodford Green in boundary changes and was held for the Conservative Party by his successor and protégé Iain Duncan Smith.

At the October 1992 Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, Tebbit embarrassed John Major's government when he made a speech attacking the Maastricht Treaty. As he walked up onto the podium he was applauded by some sections of the audience. Holding aloft a copy of the Treaty, Tebbit asked the conference a series of questions about the Treaty; did they want to see a single currency or be citizens of a European Union? The audience shouted back 'No!' after each question. Tebbit received a tumultuous standing ovation and walked into the centre of the Conference hall waving amongst the cheers. In his memoirs Major accused Tebbit of hypocrisy and disloyalty because Tebbit had encouraged Conservative MPs to vote for the Single European Act in 1986 but was now campaigning for Maastricht's rejection.

In 1995 Tebbit publicly backed John Redwood's bid for the Conservative Party leadership, praising his "brains, courage and humour".

Speaking in the House of Lords on 26 November 1996, Lord Tebbit attacked aid to Africa, saying that most aid sent to Africa goes down a "sink of iniquity, corruption and violence" and does little to help the poor. A spokesman for the charity Oxfam said Tebbit's view was "simplistic and unhelpful". Later Lord Tebbit defended his statement that most money went "into the pockets" of politicians "to buy guns for warlords".

In an article for The Spectator in May 2001 Tebbit claimed that retired British security service agents from the Foreign Office had infiltrated James Goldsmith's Referendum Party in the 1990s and then later infiltrated United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Tebbit called for an independent enquiry into the matter .

In August 2002 Tebbit called on the then leader of the Conservatives, Iain Duncan-Smith, to 'clear out' Conservative Central Office of 'squabbling children' who were involved with infighting within the Party He named Mark MacGregor, a former leader of the Federation of Conservative Students which Tebbit disbanded for 'loony Right libertarian politics', as one of them. Then in October the same year Tebbit accused a group of Conservative 'modernisers' called The Movement of trying to get him expelled from the Party. Tebbit said that The Movement consisted of a 'loose' grouping of thirteen members who had previously supported Kenneth Clarke and Michael Portillo for Party leader. Duncan-Smith subsequently denied that Tebbit would ever be expelled and Baroness Thatcher publicly said she was 'appalled' at attempts to have Tebbit expelled and telephoned him to say that she was 'four square behind him' .

In February 2003 Lord Tebbit, speaking to an audience of the Chartered Institute of Journalists at London's Reform Club in Pall Mall, urged journalists to reject political correctness in favour of "open, honest and vigorous debate". He blamed "timid" politicians, including members of his own party, for allowing PC language and ideas to take hold in Britain by default. (Press Gazette, London, 21 February 2003).

In 2004, he continued to provoke strong reactions with his outspoken opposition to the British Government's Gender Recognition Bill and Civil Partnership Bill.

Tebbit backed David Davis for Party leader during the 2005 Conservative leadership election .

Tebbit is the vice-president of the Conservative Way Forward group. He remains a Eurosceptic and his outspoken views on race and immigration throughout his career have brought him both support and opprobrium.

On 30 January 2006 he accused the Conservative Party of abandoning the party's true supporters on the Right, and opposed the new Leader David Cameron's attempts "to reposition the party on the 'Left of the middle ground'". (Daily Telegraph, 30 January 2006).

In March 2007 he became patron of the cross party Better Off Out campaign which advocates British withdrawal from the EU.

He currently lives in Mannings Heath, West Sussex.

Books

• Norman Tebbit, Britain's Future (1985) ISBN 0-85070-743-9
• Norman Tebbit, Britain in the 1990s (1986) ISBN 0-86048-006-2
• Norman Tebbit, Values of Freedom (1986) ISBN 0-85070-748-X
• Norman Tebbit, New Consensus (1988) ISBN 1-871591-00-7
• Norman Tebbit, Upwardly Mobile (Futura, 1991).
• Norman Tebbit, Unfinished Business (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991) ISBN 0-297-81149-5
• Norman Tebbit, Disappearing Britain (2005) ISBN 0-9657812-3-2

External links

• An electoral curse yet to be lifted
• What is the Conservative Party for?
• Tebbit: They are out to get me
• Tebbit will stay, says Tory leader
• TUC poster blaming Thatcher and Tebbit for rising unemployment
• TUC poster against Tebbit's 1982 Employment Act
• Tebbit on the front cover of the Private Eye