The former Conservative cabinet minister Norman Tebbit has died at the age of 94.
He was badly injured when the IRA bombed the Grand hotel during the Tory party conference in Brighton in October 1984, leaving five dead and his wife Margaret paralysed.
As he was being rescued from the rubble, he famously told Fred Bishop, station officer at Preston Circus: “Get off my bloody feet, Fred!”
One of the defining images of what was described as an attack on democracy captured him in his pyjamas on a stretcher, in pain from the injuries to his shoulder, ribs and pelvis.
Lord Tebbit was a Royal Air Force and airline pilot before becoming an MP and had a key role in trade union reform in response to the strikes of the 1970s.
He was blunt and plain-speaking though not without humour and seen as a confrontational political bruiser, close to the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who made him Tory party chairman.
After the Tories triumphed in the 1987 general election, Tebbit retired from frontline politics at 56 to care for his wife Margaret, who was paralysed from the neck down and confined to a wheelchair.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, a former Sussex University student, said: “Norman Tebbit was an icon in British politics and his death will cause sadness across the political spectrum.
“He was one of the leading exponents of the philosophy we now know as Thatcherism and his unstinting service in the pursuit of improving our country should be held up as an inspiration to all Conservatives.”
She said that the “stoicism and courage” he showed after the Grand hotel bombing and his care for his wife were reminders that he was “first and foremost a family man who always held true to his principles”.
Mrs Badenoch said: “He never buckled under pressure and he never compromised.”
Tebbit served as an MP for 22 years, mostly for Chingford, and spent six years as a cabinet minister, including as Employment Secretary and Trade and Industry Secretary.
When he was rising up the Conservative ranks, he was described as a “semi-house-trained polecat” by one Labour leader and nicknamed the Chingford skinhead. On the satirical TV show Spitting Image, his puppet was a hard man in a Hell’s Angel style leather jacket.
The former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, now Lord Cameron, said: “For all his caustic tongue and sharp wit, he was also privately a kind and thoughtful man.”
The Brighton bomber Patrick Magee was given eight life sentences in 1986, with a recommendation that he serve at least 35 years.
He was freed in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement and has appeared at various events with Jo Berry, whose father Sir Anthony Berry, a Conservative MP, was one of the five people killed.
While she publicly forgave Magee and was recently honoured for her devotion to the work of reconciliation, Tebbit remained critical of Magee and the IRA.
On terrorist prisoners being freed, he said: “Their victims remain imprisoned. Some are imprisoned within broken bodies. Some imprisoned in grief for their loved ones. Some imprisoned by death in their graves.”
Downing Street said today that the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s thoughts were with Lord Tebbit’s family and paid tribute to the “great strength he showed” in the face of the Brighton bombing, adding: “He will be missed by many.”
McGee and the other murdering filth should never have been released. Mr Tebbits words were totally correct.
I once asked a serving member of the SAS if the had a shoot to kill policy with PIRA. He answered, if they did, the issue would be over in an evening.