Norman Tebbit, hard right Tory from an age of more robust caricature and satire
Norman Tebbit who has died at 94, was a former lay trade union rep who was responsible for pushing through what was the start of decades of anti-union legislation. Close to Margaret Thatcher politically he was known In political and popular culture as the Chingford (his Parliamentary seat) skinhead.
He was caricatured on Spitting image as a leather clad Tory boot boy, an image he said he rather liked. Steve Bell in the Guardian pursued a similar line often with the addition of a bike, which Tebbit had claimed was the way the unemployed would find work.
Tebbit was at the centre of politics in the 1980s when political caricature and satire was arguably more robust in nature. Of course politicians like Starmer and Farage and caricatured but nothing like, at least as yet, with the kind of genuine viciousness that Spitting Image and Steve Bell used in their portrayals of Tebbit
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