NORMAN FOWLER WAS a member of Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet for eleven years, from 1979 until 1990. For six years he was Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, making him the longest-serving Health Secretary in Britain since the Second World War. In 1986 he led the high-profile campaign to combat Aids under the banner ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance’. At the same time he introduced one of the first clean-needle campaigns in the world for drug users, which radically reduced HIV transmission.
He continued with his efforts to combat HIV and Aids after leaving office. He joined the board of the Terrence Higgins Trust, and among his other roles in the voluntary sector he is patron of the British HIV Association and a board member of the New York-based International Aids Vaccine Initiative. He is also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales.
Fowler began his career after Cambridge as a journalist on The Times in London, where he reported the Middle East war in 1967 from Beirut and Amman. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1970 and in the Thatcher Cabinet he was first Transport Secretary and later Employment Secretary. Returning to the political front line in 1992, he became party chairman in John Major’s premiership, and following the 1997 election he was shadow Home Secretary under the leadership of William Hague.
In 2001 he went to the House of Lords and was the first chairman of the Lords Select Committee on Communications examining the media. In 2011 he headed a parliamentary inquiry into HIV and Aids in Britain. His last book, A Political Suicide, was shortlisted for the 2008 Channel 4 Television Political Book of the Year.