'He helped defeat socialism in the 1980s, now the job has to be done all over again'

FEW modern politicians have ever matched Norman Tebbit's gift for capturing the imagination of the British public.

- Leo McKinstry

The sharp contours of his vivid personality, combined with his gaunt appearance, his air of menace and his powerful rhetoric, made him a commanding figure in the Conservative Cabinet of the 1980s.

Margaret Thatcher relied on him. Other ministers feared him. He revelled in his reputation as the Prime Minister's maverick enforcer, epitomised by his portrayal on the satirical TV show Spitting Image as a thuggish bovver boy.

The hard man reputation was further reinforced by nicknames like the Chingford Strangler or the Chingford Skinhead, while Labour elder statesman Michael Foot once called him a "semi-housetrained polecat," which pleased Tebbit so much that, when he received his peerage in 1992, he incorporated a polecat into his heraldic shield.

Tebbit's influence was all the greater because of his ability to craft a striking phrase that caught a strong current of public opinion, as happened at the Tory Party Conference in 1981, which took place after a summer of violent urban unrest.

Friction

Tebbit related his own family's experience in the 1930s, a time of severe economic depression. "My father did not riot. He got on his bike and looked for work," he said.

The phrase "on yer bike" entered the political lexicon as code for tough-minded Thatcherite employment policy.

It was Tebbit who also came up with the concept of "the Cricket Test" as a barometer of integration. In an explosive move that has caused controversy to this day, he asked in April 1990 which side migrants cheered: their adopted country of England or their homeland. "A large proportion of Britain's Asian population fails to pass the cricket Test," he suggested, because they still "hark back to where they came from"." But the most memorable image of Norman Tebbit in the 1980s was not one of him triumphing on the platform or in Parliament.