The late Employment Secretary’s burning childhood wish was to be a journalist and never forgave the unions for thwarting his ambitions – even if it took a lifetime to wreak revenge
NORMAN Tebbit, who has died aged 94, waited 35 years to get his revenge on the unions. As a 16-year-old boy, he wanted to be a Fleet Street journalist, and blamed the “closed shop” for thwarting his ambition.
His time came when Margaret Thatcher determined to break the power of the unions, and handed the job to “bovver boy” Norman. As the last Employment Secretary with real clout, he brought in legislation to open union funds to legal action, abolished the closed shop and made it harder to go on strike.
It was an early version of “take back control.” Tebbit was the architect of the legal straitjacket that has held union power in check ever since.
This was the high point in a long career that took a poor, working-class lad from Ponder’s End, north London, to the heights of the Cabinet and the Conservative Party.
He even fancied his chances of succeeding her, and becoming Prime Minister, only to back off at the first fence. It was a contentious progress.
He survived an assassination attempt by the Provisional IRA on the government in the Grand Hotel, Brighton in October 1986, but suffered serious injuries and his wife Margaret was so badly hurt that she spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair, dying in 2020.
While still, by his own admission, “a shy and awkward schoolboy” aged 15, Tebbit joined the the Young Conservatives, driven by a fierce dislike of the Attlee post-war government, fearing that it would lead to Socialism and the authoritarianism spreading over Eastern Europe.
READ MORE: Inside the playboy princes’ Royal love train where Charles had secret tryst
His attitude never changed, indeed it hardened when he encountered unionism at the Financial Times, where he began work as a Prices Clerk, aged 16, with high hopes of becoming a journalist.
But he wasn’t qualified, and because the FT operated a closed shop, he became “a hostile conscript” in the print union Natsopa. He hated that. “Natsopa paid dearly for bullying a 16-year-old boy into its ranks,” he wrote in his autobiography, Upwardly Mobile.
“I swore then that I would break the power of the closed shop, an ambition I finally achieved 35 years later.”
Immediately, however, he had to do National Service, entering the RAF in the rank of pilot officer, reaching the rank of flying officer in 1954. He flew Meteor and Vampire jets, and returning to civvy street joined BOAC as a navigator and pilot, flying Boeing 707’s.
While working for the state airline, Tebbit was a lay official of Balpa, the pilots’ union, where, in his own words, he gained a reputation as an ruthless chairman and abrasive committee member. He took part in a work-to-rule and once went on strike “unpleasant at the time but invaluable.”
Encouraged by party grandees Cecil Parkinson and Peter Walker, he entered Parliament in the 1970 election, when Ted Heath won a surprise victory.
In the Commons, he gave free rein to his disputatious nature, accusing Employment Secretary Michael Foot I 1975 of “fascism” over a closed shop dispute at Ferrybridge power station that cost six men their jobs.
READ MORE: ‘My mum Dame Vera Lynn did incredible things in her final years but she never sang – not once’
He aligned himself with hard-line boss George Ward in the Grunwick dispute, accusing strikers seeking union recognition of “red fascism.”
The stage was set for his rapid rise under Margaret Thatcher. After ousting Labour in 1979, she appointed him as Trade Minister, and two years later sent him to Employment to take a tougher line with the unions than his moderate predecessor, Jim Prior.
The outcome was the 1982 Employment Act, the first in a long line of such legislation It undermined – but did not ban – the closed shop and more importantly opened the unions’ funds to claims for damages.
What became known as “Tebbit’s Law” began the inexorable decline of trade union power, as he wished. He regards it as “my greatest achievement in government.” During his time, he later divulged, Special Branch officers spied on trade union leaders.
Job done, he moved to Trade and Industry in 1983, and after his survival from the Brighton bomb to chairman of the Tory Party and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, remaining a loyal and trusted lieutenant of Thatcher.
READ MORE: Relief and suspicion at Scunthorpe steelworks – ‘They bought it to shut it down’
He was touted – not least by himself – as a likely successor to her, but backed off when the opportunity presented itself in 1990 after the Iron Lady quit the premiership.
On the back-benches, he was a vociferous opponent of UK membership of the European Union, and an early supporter of withdrawal. He was made a Companion of Honour and created Lord Tebbit of Chingford in 1992. He voted against civil partnerships and same-sex marriage, opposed abolition of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and aid for Africa.
But his burning childhood wish to be a journalist was finally granted in 1995, when he became a newspaper columnist, first for The Sun and then the Mail on Sunday and finally after 2010 for the Daily Telegraph.
His comments were characteristically pungent, Right-wing and took no prisoners. He also appeared in TV documentaries about the Thatcher years, and wrote his autobiography – plus a game cook book.
In later life, he and Margaret moved to Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, where he refused to attend services at the cathedral because the Dean was in a civil partnership with another clergyman.
In his nineties, he was little heard of, but there is no doubt that his views remained unchanged. The world had moved on, but not him with it.
He was so proud was Michael Foot’s put-down of him as “a semi-trained-polecat” that he put one on his coat of arms. His Latin motto was Qui Tacet Consentit – silence means consent, hardly a democratic slogan.
He died at “peacefully at home”, and is survived by two sons and a daughter.
READ MORE: Kickers’ ‘durable’ Back to School shoe range that ‘last all year’