Norman Tebbit, who served as a cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government, has died aged 94.
Throughout the 1980s he worked as the chairman of the Conservative Party and led departments including trade and industry and employment.
A loyal ally of Thatcher, Lord Tebbit backed her agenda, bringing in laws designed to curb union power – including making them liable for damages if they did illegal acts.
In 1984, he and his wife were injured in the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Tory Party’s annual conference.
He suffered a broken shoulder blade, fractured vertebrae and a cracked collarbone, while his wife, Margaret, was left permanently disabled by the bomb.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Lord Tebbit’s son William said: “At 11.15pm on 7 July 2025 Lord Tebbit died peacefully at home aged 94.
“His family ask that their privacy is respected at this time and a further statement regarding funeral arrangements will be made in due course.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Lord Tebbit “was an icon in British politics and his death will cause sadness across the political spectrum”.
Lord Michael Dobbs, the author of House of Cards who worked as Lord Tebbit’s chief of staff, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he was “a man of great humour, of great political insight and a man of tremendous courage too.”
“Not only political courage because he was willing to pursue policies he thought were fundamentally right even though at the time they might have been unpopular but he was also a man of great personal courage – the way he dealt with the aftermath of the Brighton bombing,” he said.
“Politics misses tremendously people of that character who believe so deeply in what they are pursuing that they risk everything for it.”
Margaret Thatcher’s biographer Lord Charles Moore said he was the “first important personal example of Thatcherism in action because he was the self-made man from the working class and he was unapologetic about that”.
Lord Tebbit served as an MP from 1970 until 1992, representing Epping for the first four years and Chingford from 1974 to 1992.
In 1981, he made a famous speech to the Conservative Party conference in which he criticised riots over unemployment, telling the audience that in the 1930s his father had not rioted but had “got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it”.
In 1990, he provoked anger when he posed a ‘cricket test’ to help determine whether a person was truly British.
“A large proportion of Britain’s Asian population fail to pass the cricket test,” he said.
“Which side do they cheer for? It’s an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?”
