The word “icon” is perhaps thrown around rather liberally in the lexicon of memorial. But in the realm of Tory politics, Norman Tebbit, whose death was announced today, was an icon – the politician who perhaps came closest, save of course for the Iron Lady herself, to embodying the phenomenon of Thatcherism.
Why? He was not cast in the grouse-moor mould of the Harold Macmillan era, to be sure; but nor was Edward Heath, and little affection won he by that. (Nor, indeed, was Margaret Thatcher.)
There was, perhaps, a degree of exoticism about his working-class background in the front rank of Tory politics in what was a much more class-conscious era.
But Tebbit was no exotic pet, and nor would he have made such an impression on the public consciousness had he been so. Rather, he managed to personally embody a deeper, seismic shift in British politics: the Conservative party’s decisive, and enormously successful, play for a large slice of the working-class vote.
It is the nature of revolutionary myth-making to sometimes overstate a transformation. Working-class Toryism long predates Thatcherism, be that its Protestant and Unionist manifestations in Ulster, Scotland, and Liverpool or the more widespread tendency, noted by George Dangerfield in his 1935 classic The Strange Death of Liberal England, for working men to support the party that had no time for teetotalism.
But while the nation’s pubs might once have been a “chain of political fortresses” for the party of Lord Salisbury, one can only imagine what he would have made of a working-class man serving as chairman of the Conservative and Unionist party. But then, ironically, a facility for evolution has always (until recently) been the party’s strongest suit.
Yet personally embodying a change is not enough to make an icon. Alone it produces at best a totem, or perhaps that should be a token; a passive object to be hoisted aloft to signal the party’s adaptation to changing times.
No, what made Tebbit an icon was that he believed in that change and he fought for it. He was a fighter, at a point when the party needed fighters, a true believer in what was in its early years a deeply uncertain revolution, and a bulwark for his leader against the forces of genteel reaction that would certainly, had the opportunity presented itself, have ditched her and her experiment alike.
It would be an ugly politics that comprised solely each side’s furious partisans. But it would be a very hollow politics that made space only for conciliators. There is an easy route to a faction’s heart for a politician willing and able to be their tribune of the plebs, but that doesn’t mean the job can’t be well and honourably done, and Tebbit did it honourably and well.
The latter is best illustrated by his star turns on the conference platform. Obviously, there was his (in)famous comment about getting on one’s bike and looking for work. But more significant, in light of subsequent events, must be his call-and-response routine at the 1992 conference.
“Do you want to be part of a European union?”, he asked the hall; the “NO!” all but took the roof off. All this infuriated John Major, of course; one wonders if either seriously thought they would both live to see Britain leave it.
Tebbit paid a heavier price than most for his frontline political career; the Brighton bombing saw him trapped under the rubble for an hour and, much more seriously, paralysed his wife, Margaret, for whom he subsequently cared. But like the true believer he was, he remained involved in the party and what became the Eurosceptic cause. He also managed a decade in the spotlight without acquiring airs and graces, and in the digital age proved more than willing to wade into the comments beneath his Telegraph blog and have it out with all and sundry.
Courage, energy, authenticity – these Tebbit had in spades, and they are the things of which political icons are made.
One might quibble that my definition makes little reference to the actual content of Tebbit’s beliefs. But that is deliberate. He certainly held many views with which readers of this newspaper would profoundly disagree, then and now, and his views on social issues were wildly out of step with modern society.
But an icon is not a hero, except perhaps in the Greek sense; recognising one does not require agreeing with all or even any of what they stand for. Every movement will have its own icons, and one of democracy’s great strengths – or indeed, basic requirements – is recognising that there is space in public life for more than one.
In fact, as a Conservative, it does with hindsight seem to have been a stronger, more vital Conservative party whose chairman was a substantial figure who could, occasionally, embarrass the leader.
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Henry Hill is deputy editor of ConservativeHome
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