Tory grandee Norman Tebbit, who was one of Margaret Thatcher’s most loyal supporters, has died, aged 94.
Lord Tebbit, a former airline pilot who had served in the RAF, died peacefully yesterday at 11.15pm.
The Tory stalwart joined the Conservatives in 1946 and was known as the architect behind the scenes during the Thatcher era.
He was one of the most high profile survivors of the IRA’s bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
The striking image of an ashen-faced Norman being stretchered from the wreckage wearing only his pyjamas became one of the enduring images of the IRA’s attack.
His political career took a backseat to his family life as his long-term wife, Margaret required care after she was almost killed in the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the 1984 Tory Party Conference.
It took four hours for the couple to be rescued among the rubble with it said they held hands and whispered to each other in the dark.
He was first elected to the House of Commons in 1970, where he served in Thatcher’s government and gained a reputation for his no-nonsense style, earning him the nickname the ‘Chingford Skinhead’ by the puppet satirists at Spitting Image.
Tory grandee Norman Tebbit, who was one of Margaret Thatcher’s most loyal supporters, has died, aged 94
Norman Tebbit with Margaret Thatcher waving at a Conservative Party Conference in 1982
In one of his most controversial speeches following riots in Handsworth and Brixton in 1981, with millions unemployed, he said that in the 1930s when faced with the dole his father ‘got on his bike and looked for work… till he found it.’
Tributes have poured in for Lord Tebbit, with Annunziata Rees-Mogg, the sibling of Jacob Rees-Mogg, saying she was ‘very sad to hear’ about his death.
‘A life well lived and an extraordinary man. End of an era. He will be much missed. RIP,’ she wrote on X.
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