(BrianAJackson/Getty Images) Margaret Tebbit’s life was a determined struggle not to surrender to her paralysis.
Thirty-six years ago, in the early morning of October 12th, 1984, an IRA bomb exploded in the Grand Hotel, Brighton, during the Tory Party annual conference. It narrowly failed to kill its principal target, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, but it killed five people and it severely injured another 31. Two of the most seriously injured victims that night were Norman Tebbit, then-secretary of state for Industry and a rising star of Thatcherite Toryism, and his wife, Margaret. She suffered perhaps the worst injuries of those who survived, first suffering great pain as they waited for rescuers to dig them from out of the rubble, then feeling nothing at all, which as a former nurse she realized meant paralysis below the neck. Earlier this week Margaret (now Lady) Tebbit died after 36 years of fighting disability, determinedly wresting some mobility back from it