Norman Tebbit has died.

Yes we certainly saw a different side to him against the way he was so often presented.

He was very loyal to Margaret Thatcher, devoted to and cared for his wife who was paralysed in the IRA bombing in Brighton.

RIP 💐

I agree with all of the comments. He must have been a fair age.
RIP

His poor wife a victim of the IRA

RIP

94 - a good age.

I hope his bicycle is waiting for him.

That’s the one comment I did agree with!

I’d have failed his cricket test though (do you support the team of where you/your ancestors came from or where you were born/reside?). Wherever Ive lived/travelled I’m 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 first, 🇬🇧 second and 🇪🇺 third…

I admire him for his devotion to his wife, who seems to have been a very nice woman. He was badly injured himself in the Brighton bombing and suffered the effects the rest of his life. Cannot agree with his politics, however.

Sad news. I had so much respect and admiration for this very brave man. Condolences to his family. RIP Sir Norman Tebbit 💐.

Sad news and he did reach the good old age of 94.

Like his politics or not, he was a decent man and devoted himself to caring for his wife after her terrible injuries in the Brighton bombing.

His comment about the bicycle has been misquoted and used against him for years, even after he has died, I notice.

RIP Norman Tebbit.

A true Conservative and a thoroughly decent man. RIP Lord Tebbit.

The quote associated with Norman Tebbit is: "I grew up in the '30s with an unemployed father. He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it." This quote is often used to encourage people to actively seek employment rather than rely on welfare or protest. However, it's important to note that this is a recollection of Tebbit's father's actions, not a direct quote from Tebbit himself telling the unemployed to "get on your bike".

Exactly Allira! How does this differ from Starmer’s oft repeated disclosure that his father was a toolmaker?

He showed such love for his wife after the horrendous IRA bombing. RIP

He may very well have been a caring man to his family!

I worked at our local unemployment benefit office when Round Oak Steel was closed even though they had a full order book and made top quality steel. I’ll never forget the queues of men every day claiming benefit or signing on. These closures were all over the midlands, hundreds of heavy metal workers being put out of work. Ancillary industries were also hit as this manufacturing was closed. There was no work apart from shops who very soon began to close as well. It left most of The Black Country decimated.

The Thatcher years destroyed heavy industry across most of the UK. We could certainly do with some of that industry now.

British Steel having declined during the Callaghan years ayse, that and other factors causing great disillusionment in traditional Labour voters like my father.

ayse I don’t think heavy industry is wanted now, I so remember families desperately wanting their sons to have an
education which would mean no coal mines like their fathers,
grandfathers and g grandfathers had waiting for them

I don’t believe 16 year olds would “go down pit now”

Nobody should have to go down a mine to work.

Best to make sure you don't buy or use anything which has a component which was mined underground, then no-one would.

I was on maternity leave, feeding my days old baby when news of the IRA bomb came on the tv screen. I dislike thatcher, her policies and had booed Tebbit when he spoke at a meeting during the Miners strike
All of that no longer mattered as the dreadful news unfolded. I admired Thstcher’s attempt to compose herself when she spoke in the immediate aftermath. I always admired the way Tebbit cared for his wife with such love and devotion
As for the terrorists, this bomb alienated then even further. Dreadful days work to attempt to murder the cabinet

I’ll never forget that period of my life. Each month we were terrified that my husband would get a redundancy note in his pay packet. He was actively looking for employment elsewhere but I was so upset that we would have to uproot our family and move to a part of the country that we didn’t want to live in and move away from friends and family. It put a great strain on our marriage.Even though he might have been misquoted the fact was that people were losing their jobs all over the country and when engineering works closed down there was no effort made by the government to create new jobs for them. Some parts of the country eg Ashington are still suffering from that time.

I spent half that night looking out from a bathroom window and down towards the town trying to work out what could possibly be the reason for all the helicopters, the sirens, the noise. Breakfast news revealed the carnage and I was late for work not just because the traffic was at a standstill almost everywhere, but I wanted to see Sir Norman finally extricated from the rubble. I will never forget the horror of what happened, the violence, the loss of 5 lives in a Brighton landmark.

RIP Sir Norman. You stayed strong, survived grave injuries and years of treatment, truly cared for your injured and paralysed Wife, until her death 5 years ago. A real politician - whatever one's politics -who showed real courage when it was so needed.

Norman Tebbit was a of a generation of politicians we will never see again: a conviction politician who had worked his way up from the working class and had a life before politics. Like him or not, he always said what he thought was right and had no time for political correctness or toeing the party line like politicians now.
At a personal level, Tebbit had two brushes with death: the first time when he crashed a plane in the RAF and the second time when he was seriously injured in the Brighton bombing. Also when his wife was paralysed in the bombing, people began to see the human side of Tebbit and see him in a better light.

MayBee70

I’ll never forget that period of my life. Each month we were terrified that my husband would get a redundancy note in his pay packet. He was actively looking for employment elsewhere but I was so upset that we would have to uproot our family and move to a part of the country that we didn’t want to live in and move away from friends and family. It put a great strain on our marriage.Even though he might have been misquoted the fact was that people were losing their jobs all over the country and when engineering works closed down there was no effort made by the government to create new jobs for them. Some parts of the country eg Ashington are still suffering from that time.

As is The Black Country, Glasgow, NI and anywhere north of the Watford Gap.

Well said Grandmafrench, it was a horrific event, and he showed admirable bravery then and in the following years. RIP.

ayse

He may very well have been a caring man to his family!

I worked at our local unemployment benefit office when Round Oak Steel was closed even though they had a full order book and made top quality steel. I’ll never forget the queues of men every day claiming benefit or signing on. These closures were all over the midlands, hundreds of heavy metal workers being put out of work. Ancillary industries were also hit as this manufacturing was closed. There was no work apart from shops who very soon began to close as well. It left most of The Black Country decimated.

The Thatcher years destroyed heavy industry across most of the UK. We could certainly do with some of that industry now.

Yes. People forget about ancillary industries and which even included things like local shops, hairdressers etc. It was very worrying in Derby a few years ago when train making nearly ceased completely; it came very close to doing so. There’s a terrible drug problem in some areas that never recovered from the decimation of their local industry. My partner attributes his father’s early death to the stress he was under when he knew that the industry he worked for was under threat. He had horrible arguments with the government at the time but it was to no avail. It devastated him, knowing what was going to happen to his workers.