THATCHER-ERA hard-man Lord Norman Tebbit, who spearheaded Tory attacks on trade unionism, has died aged 94.

Mr Tebbit became a leading figure in Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party, with an abrasive political style that in many ways prefigured the rise of the populist right.

He was described by then Labour cabinet minister Michal Foot as a “semi-house-trained polecat,” a description he embraced, and was also dubbed the Chingford Skinhead, in reference to the London constituency he represented from 1970 to 1992.

As employment secretary from 1982, Mr Tebbit built on an established reputation as an anti-union fanatic to drive through legislation radically undermining collective rights — laws which have survived largely unchanged to this day.

He was famous for telling the unemployed to “get on your bikes” to look for work, as his own father had done in the 1930s.

Ironically, he had himself been an active trade unionist during his pre-politics career as an airline pilot.

Mr Tebbit also served as Tory Party chairman and industry secretary under Thatcher.

He later became notorious for suggesting a “cricket test” be applied to people of migrant heritage, with the team they supported being used to gauge their integration into British life.

Mr Tebbit was a victim of the 1984 bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton by the IRA, an action which nearly succeeded in its aim of killing Thatcher.

He survived but his wife Margaret, who died in 2020, was disabled for the rest of her life.

Tributes to Mr Tebbit were led today by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who said: “Norman gave me a lot of help in my early days as an MEP and was a great man.”