He will be remembered as one of the most prominent supporters of leaving the EU\u00a0 <\/p>\n
If Nigel Farage is the godfather of Brexit, Norman Tebbit was one of its grandparents.<\/p>\n
Lord Tebbit\u2019s staunch pro-British sovereignty stance, notably his opposition to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and support for the \u201cBetter Off Out\u201d campaign, paved the way for Brexit<\/a> and redefined the UK-Europe relationship, even if in the 1980s his generation of Cabinet ministers could not yet imagine Britain would ever leave the bloc entirely.<\/p>\n Tebbit will be remembered as one of the most prominent supporters of leaving the EU and advocates for Brexit in the run up to the 2016 referendum<\/a> and beyond.<\/p>\n Long after retirement he remained a supporter of right-wing causes in the Tories including becoming honorary president of the Bow Group think tank. He would also regularly rally the European Research Group of Tory Brexiteer parliamentarians.<\/p>\n Back in his heyday in the 1980s, Lord Tebbit enjoyed his reputation as a political bruiser and enforcer, unafraid of confrontation as he helped drive forward the economic and social changes that characterised Thatcherism<\/a>, a necessary corrective, as the two allies (he and Margaret Thatcher) saw it to the dominance of the trade unions under Labour in the 1970s.<\/p>\n After inner-city riots in Handsworth, Birmingham, and Brixton, south London, Lord Tebbit rejected suggestions that street violence was a natural response to rising unemployment. He told the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool: \u201cI grew up in the thirties with an unemployed father. He didn\u2019t riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it.\u201d The phrase \u201con yer bike\u201d to look for work still resonates today.<\/p>\n Labour\u2019s hard-left leader Michael Foot famously called him a \u201csemi-housetrained polecat\u201d after Tebbit criticised the closed shop \u2013 whereby members of any profession had to join a union. In his memoirs, he recalled breaking this link as his \u201cgreatest achievement in government\u201d.<\/p>\n Tebbit will also be remembered for launching one of the first major privatisations by selling off British Telecom, a symbolic moment in the shift away from public ownership. The UK is still debating the merits of the nationalisation of its railways and water companies today.<\/p>\n But a night in 1984 defined the rest of Tebbit\u2019s life. He was one of the victims of the IRA\u2019s bombing of Brighton\u2019s Grand Hotel. Five people died in the terrorist group\u2019s attempt to assassinate Thatcher and her Cabinet during the Tory party\u2019s annual conference.<\/p>\n Norman and Margaret Tebbit were asleep on the second floor; the blast sent their bed crashing two storeys down into the Grand Hotel\u2019s foyer. While he sustained broken bones, his wife was paralysed. He later left his Cabinet post to care for her.<\/p>\n John Whittingdale, a former Conservative Cabinet minister, served as Tebbit\u2019s special advisor at the Department for Trade in the 1980s, taking on the job the day after the Brighton bombing. Whittingdale told The i Paper how for the first fortnight of his new job, Government meetings were taken in the hospital where Margaret Tebbit was being treated.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my view, Norman would have become prime minister, had it not been for Brighton. He was seen as the natural successor to Thatcher. He was by far the most popular person amongst the membership. And I think Thatcher would have been happy at the idea of him taking over from her.<\/p>\n \u201cBrighton was really what changed it, and he felt for the rest of his life a sense of guilt that his wife was disabled because of him, essentially. She was in Brighton and staying in the Grand Hotel because he was a member of the Cabinet. That was why he essentially sacrificed his political ambition,\u201d Whittingdale added.<\/p>\n Tebbit was a black and white character. In conversations I had with him in his later years he spoke about his wife Margaret with an unfailing tenderness and love. But he could not forgive the IRA \u2013 which never apologised for the atrocity \u2013 for what they had done.<\/p>\n It was the other Margaret in his life \u2013 Lady T \u2013 with whom he will always be associated. He was loyal to the end, even when her Cabinet deposed her in 1990. But in office he often stood up to her, remarking the worst that the then prime minister could do was sack him.<\/p>\n