Norman Tebbit - After Leaving The House of Commons

After Leaving The House of Commons

Tebbit decided not to stand in the 1992 election, in order to devote more time to caring for his disabled wife. After the election he was granted a life peerage and entered the House of Lords as Baron Tebbit, of Chingford in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. His former seat of Chingford was aggregated in 1997 with Woodford Green in boundary changes and was held for the Conservative Party by his successor and protégé Iain Duncan Smith. Tebbit famously said: "If you think I'm right-wing, you should meet this guy".

Tebbit resumed his fight against the Maastricht Treaty. On 11 August 1992 Wyatt noted in his diary: " also seems to have formed a new alliance with Tebbit who stirs her up and talks a lot of nonsense". At the October 1992 Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, Tebbit embarrassed John Major's government when he made a speech attacking the Maastricht Treaty. As he walked up onto the podium he was applauded by some sections of the audience, described as "young, in t-shirts, aggressively self-confident – the lager louts of our party" in the diary of the Conservative Party chairman of the time. Holding aloft a copy of the Treaty, Tebbit asked the conference a series of questions about the Treaty; did they want to see a single currency or be citizens of a European Union? The audience shouted back "No!" after each question. Tebbit received a tumultuous standing ovation and walked into the centre of the Conference hall waving amongst the cheers. Gyles Brandreth, a Conservative whip, wrote in his diary:

"The talk of the town is Norman Tebbit's vulgar grand-standing barn-storming performance on Europe. He savaged Maastricht, poured scorn on monetary union, patronised the PM...and brought the conference (or a good part of it) to its feet roaring for more. He stood there, arms aloft, acknowledging the ovation, Norman the conqueror".

In his memoirs Major accused Tebbit of hypocrisy and disloyalty because Tebbit had encouraged Conservative MPs to vote for the Single European Act in 1986 but was now campaigning for Maastricht's rejection.

Tebbit privately said of Major on 17 November 1994: "He has the mulishness of a weak man with stupidity". When asked what would it take for him to support Major, Tebbit responded: "Have an entirely new department, the sole job of which would be to deal with the Brussels machinery in every aspect. I agree that we don't want to leave the EU, but we've got to manipulate it and block every single advance we don't like. No, no, no must be his weapon. Veto everything he disapproves of or that we disapprove of".

In 1995 Tebbit publicly backed John Redwood's bid for the Conservative Party leadership, praising his "brains, courage and humour".

Speaking in the Lords on 26 November 1996, Lord Tebbit attacked aid to Africa, saying that most aid sent to Africa goes down a "sink of iniquity, corruption and violence" and does little to help the poor. A spokesman for the charity Oxfam said Tebbit's view was "simplistic and unhelpful". Later Lord Tebbit defended his statement that most money went "into the pockets" of politicians "to buy guns for warlords".

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph on 2 November 1998 Tebbit said homosexuals should be barred from being Home Secretary. A Conservative Party spokesman said Tebbit was "out of touch" and William Hague's official spokesman said Hague disagreed with Tebbit.

In October 1999 he spoke out against the plans to abolish the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Tebbit said he was against throwing the Constabulary's name and badge "into the modernisation trash can" and that the RUC had been "the thin green line standing between bloody anarchy and the rule of law". Tebbit also mocked Blair's pledge at the Labour conference to "set people free": "He has set them free. More than 250 terrorists, bombers and extortionists. Kneecappers, kidnappers, arsonists and killers have been set free. But 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".

In an interview for the New Statesman magazine in June 2000, Tebbit praised Hague's right-ward shift and revealed that he had "never been a Portillo fan". He also mused on not standing for the Conservative leadership after Thatcher's resignation: "When I look at what happened to the party, I tell myself that perhaps I failed in a duty. I suppose I am one of those who have it on my conscience that I allowed Mr Blair to become prime minister". When asked if he regretted also allowing Major to become Prime Minister, Tebbit responded:

"I helped him. If I'd opposed him, he wouldn't have been on the radar screen. I'd have been opposing Michael Heseltine. I had to make the decision quickly. I didn't want to go back on my word to my wife that I'd retired from front-line politics. How would it all work? Was No 10 suitable for someone in a wheelchair? All these things go through one's mind. Then if Michael had won...he would have had to ask me to join his government, and I didn't want that. I asked myself: why am I risking all this? And I made my decision...I might have been an absolute disaster in the job. It's possible. So I am left there. You can't rewrite it. You can't rerun it."

In an article for The Spectator in May 2001 Tebbit claimed that retired British security service agents from the Foreign Office had infiltrated James Goldsmith's Referendum Party in the 1990s and then later infiltrated United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Tebbit called for an independent enquiry into the matter.

In August 2002 Tebbit called on the then leader of the Conservatives, Iain Duncan Smith, to "clear out" Conservative Central Office of "squabbling children" who were involved with infighting within the Party. He named Mark MacGregor, a former leader of the Federation of Conservative Students which Tebbit disbanded for "loony Right libertarian politics", as one of them. Then in October the same year Tebbit accused a group of Conservative "modernisers" called "The Movement" of trying to get him expelled from the Party. Tebbit said that The Movement consisted of a "loose" grouping of thirteen members who had previously supported Kenneth Clarke and Michael Portillo for Party leader. Duncan-Smith subsequently denied that Tebbit would ever be expelled and Lady Thatcher publicly said she was "appalled" at attempts to have Tebbit expelled and telephoned him to say that she was "four square behind him".

In February 2003 Lord Tebbit, speaking to an audience of the Chartered Institute of Journalists at London's Reform Club in Pall Mall, urged journalists to reject political correctness in favour of "open, honest and vigorous debate". He blamed "timid" politicians, including members of his own party, for allowing PC language and ideas to take hold in Britain by default.

In 2004 he opposed the British Government's Gender Recognition Act 2004 and Civil Partnership Act 2004.

Tebbit backed David Davis for Party leader during the 2005 Conservative leadership election.

On 30 January 2006 he accused the Conservative Party of abandoning the party's true supporters on the Right, and opposed the new Leader David Cameron's attempts "to reposition the party on the 'Left of the middle ground'".

In March 2007 he became patron of the cross-party Better Off Out campaign which advocates British withdrawal from the EU. Tebbit issued a statement explaining his support:

"From being a supporter of British membership of the Common Market in 1970 I have come to believe that the United Kingdom would be Better Off Out of the developing European Republic of the 21st century. We British have a thousand year history of self-government. We have been free and democratic longer than any other nation. The European Union is too diverse, too bureaucratic, too corporatist and too centralist to be a functioning democracy. We are happy to trade with our European friends and the rest of the world – but we would prefer to govern ourselves."

In an interview with The Times in September 2007 Tebbit said the Conservatives lack somebody of the standing of Thatcher, and claimed that although it did not matter if Cameron's team were educated at Eton, "what a lot of people will suggest is that they don't know how the other half lives. David and his colleagues – the very clever young men they have in Central Office these days – are very intellectually clever, but they have no experience of the world whatsoever. He has spent much of his time in the Conservative Party and as a public relations guy. Well, it's not the experience of most people in the streets. That's the real attack and that's damaging to him, I think".

In February 2008, after a sympathetic magazine article written by shadow education secretary Michael Gove, Tebbit publicly criticised what he characterised as "the poisonous tree of Blairism", which he claimed had been "planted" in the Conservative Party front bench.

In May 2009, Norman Tebbit urged voters to snub the main three political parties in the upcoming EU Parliament election. Tebbit, who in March 2009 revealed that he would vote for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), said "Local elections, the great British public should just treat as normal", but suggested using the European election to send a message to the implicated parties. Tebbit pointed out that there were a series of smaller parties people could vote for in addition to UKIP, including the Green Party, but he urged against voting British National Party.

On 23 February 2010, the Daily Mail reported that Tebbit was alleged to have attacked a ceremonial Chinese dragon during a Chinese New Year parade. He is said to have been unaware it was Chinese New Year and to have "kicked the rear of a child who was dressed in the traditional costume of a dragon". An onlooker said: "This old man came running towards the dragon on the parade. He grabbed the drum and cymbal being played and then started violently kicking the dragon itself. Inside the costume was an adult at the front wearing a dragon mask and a child at the rear. He seemed upset about the noise". Tebbit later said: "I don't think my reaction was extreme at all. I placed my hand on the drum so I could diminish the noise and asked the drummer what was going on and got a rap on the knuckles for my pain. I was then barged by the dragon. I barged it back and might have done something like kick it. I wasn't sure how to deal with it. I've never been barged by a dragon before". A local Conservative town councillor, Mr Chung, visited Tebbit the day after the incident and received an apology. Chung said: "I said his actions were upsetting. He apologised. He only then understood what he had done".

In 2011, Tebbit criticised the Conservative-led coalition government's proposed reforms to the National Health Service, describing himself as "a staunch supporter of the principles of the NHS, whatever its difficulties and problems".

Tebbit is the vice-president of the Conservative Way Forward group. He currently lives in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.