The remorseless march of the machines is preoccupying writers, who fear being rendered obsolete. This has caused me to do two things: firstly, to explore creative writing, which I hope will continue to require human input, and secondly to pay more attention to modern technology, which had always contrived, somehow, both to terrify and bore me. For those of us of a certain age, contemplating Artificial Intelligence also means contemplating time travel, thanks to The Terminator, the 1980s sci-fi classic starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It doesn’t bode well for my nascent career as a fiction writer that I can conceive of nothing more exciting than travelling back to the 1980s — to the UK, not an imaginary Los Angeles — and being … a speechwriter. Perhaps no man is a hero to his valet, but political operatives never cease searching for heroes. Arnold Schwarzenegger became such a hero to American Republicans. Now one of the great British Conservative heroes has departed.
The 1980s recede with alarming rapidity. In fact, we have nearly reached 2029, the then distant future from which Terminator Arnie travelled back. And yet the need for heroes endures — on the written page, on the screen, and in real life. Frightening times require men and women of action, who are willing to go forth (if necessary, by getting on their bike) and touch greatness, because that is what the times demand of them.
Norman Tebbit was such an action man. As a boy, he lived through the heroism that defined our country’s response to Adolph Hitler. Called up for National Service, he served with distinction in the RAF, later becoming a commercial pilot. He was also a journalist, an experience that first aroused his horror of trade union closed shops.
He brought a clarity of thought, huge experience, and steely vision that I found thrilling
The Conservative Party was vastly improved by the influx of men like Norman Tebbit: working-class patriots with big brains and boundless energy. Whenever the party has seemed to rediscover an air of aristocratic indolence and indifference, it has justly suffered. Working-class voters sensed that Tebbit was not merely courting their votes; he burned with a fierce resolve that they should enjoy a more abundant and happier life. He knew that working-class natives have the same desires as an immigrant like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Nobody could plausibly claim these modern conservatives were snobs. Tellingly, the patrician antisemitism that has so disfigured UK Toryism at times was also absent then.
This was not an ivory tower approach to politics. Men of action are not content to craft thoughtful pamphlets. Things must actually get done. The civil service’s job was to implement what politicians wanted. Back then ministers like Tebbit made sure they knew it and did it. Painful industrial policy decisions were not made out of spite, but because Tebbit and his colleagues faced up to the fact that the status-quo wasn’t working. How starkly this contrasts with the needless assault on fishermen and farmers that recent times have seen.
The trade unions were not to be deplored because they represented workers but because they limited opportunity, stifled enterprise, and had driven the economy into the ground. Flying Officer Tebbit piloted us to new heights. This was tremendous on a national scale, radically transforming our economic prospects. Yet the headline figures also told a collection of individual stories, of people able to enjoy home ownership, higher incomes, and other comforts and chances of which they had barely even dared to dream. Norman Tebbit understood the need for dreams as readily as a hippy stoner. Unlike them, he was able to make dreams come true.
Even his harshest critics could see that Norman Tebbit was a force of nature and would not back down. If anyone still doubted his courage and resolve, that illusion was shattered by his stoicism in the face of the Brighton bomb, which killed friends, nearly killed him, and paralysed his wife Margaret. He spoke of all this without a trace of self-pity, but plenty of righteous anger. He left the Cabinet to care for Margaret, whose injuries were compounded by dementia with Lewy bodies, a condition I know to be indescribably cruel.
As was befitting for a politician devoid of snobbery, he found his depiction on Spitting Image entertaining. It was very funny to see him as a bovver boy in a leather jacket. I also think it was useful to appear somewhat menacing. We live, after all, in an age where politicians are utterly incapable of imposing their will on enemies foreign or domestic. Life is always more nuanced than political satire, however. A friend said Norman Tebbit was by far the most charming and courteous politician she met throughout her husband’s long political career. Matthew Parris writes movingly in his autobiography of Tebbit’s hopes that Leopoldo Galtieri would spare the lives of young Argentine men by not triggering the Falklands War. A few years ago, he replied very kindly to my gauche fan letter.
After the Commons, he graced our upper house. He may not have inherited his title, but having been the guv’nor for so long, it was apt that he should become a Lord. He brought a clarity of thought, huge experience, and steely vision that I found thrilling. I concede that I am a nerd, but I would bet all the money I have that a great many voters who once disliked Tebbit have come to recognise that he was the real deal, indeed a great man.
Once again, our people are either beaten down by pessimism or contorted with rage at the state we’re in. Would that we could reach into the past, and plonk Norman Tebbit back in the Cabinet. He would sort things out. I’d even back him against killer robots. We do still have his example, though. The best of the latest generation of politicians must heed it.
Tom Greeves is a former speechwriter. He publishes essays and short stories on his Substack.
