Richard Austen Butler, often known by the acronym RAB, was a Conservative politician who filled all the major offices of government save one—that of prime minister. Gradually over the years, his name became almost a household word, strongly identified with a belief in and a commitment to a postwar economic and political consensus that, in the opinions of some, dominated British politics until 1979: a brand of politics dubbed "Butskellism".
Background
Richard Austen Butler was born on 9 December 1902, at Attock Serie in the Punjab, India, into a family with connections both to the imperial service and to the University of Cambridge. His father was the distinguished administrator Sir Montague Butler.
Education
Richard Butler was educated at Marlborough College and the University of Cambridge, where he became president of the University Union in 1924 and fellow of Corpus Christi College between 1925 and 1929.
Career
The financial security he derived from this marriage encouraged him to pursue a political career, and he became Conser¬vative M.P. for Saffron Walden in 1929, holding that seat until his retirement from the House of Commons in 1965.
Butler gained early promotion up the political ladder. In the National governments of 1931 to 1940 he became undersecretary for India (1932-1937), parliamentary secretary to the minister of labor (1937-1938), and then undersecretary for foreign affairs (1937-1941), a post he kept in the wartime government of Winston Churchill. Since Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary on the eve of World War II, was in the House of Lords, Butler became the principal spokesman on foreign affairs in the House of Commons. For this reason he came to be associated with the policy of appeasement advocated by Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, and was identified as one of the politicians who were prepared to hand over Czechoslovakia to Hitler through the Munich agreement of 1938.
On leaving the Foreign Office in 1941, Butler became president of the Board of Education (1941-1944) and then minister of education (1944-1945) in Churchills wartime administrations.
The 1945 general election brought a landslide victory to the Labour Party. In opposition, Butler became chairman of the Conservative Research Department between 1945 and 1951.
Butler did not enjoy the best of relations with Macmillan, having had hopes of being prime minister himself in 1957. Nevertheless, Macmillan did add to his duties by making him home secretary—a post he filled from January 1957 to July 1962—as well as chairman of the Conservative Party from 1959 to 1961 and deputy leader of the Conservative Party from 1962 to 1963. He was also First Secretary of State and minister in charge of the Central African Office between 1962 and 1963. He was removed from this last post in 1963, but in October 1963, in the government of Sir Alec Douglas Home, he was made foreign secretary; he held that post until October 1964. Home had replaced Macmillan as prime minister, having benefited from Macmillan’s personal backing. Butler temporarily took over the day-to-day running of the government in 1963, while Macmillan was having an operation for prostate cancer; but that was as near to becoming prime minister as he ever came, although he had sought such an opportunity in 1957 and again in 1960.
Once the Labour government was formed in October 1964, Butler decided that his political career was at an end. He left the Commons in 1965 and was raised to the House of Lords as Lord Butler of Saffron Walden in 1965. From that point on, he contented himself with an academic career, acting as master of Trinity College, Cambridge, between 1965 and 1978. He died on 8 March 1982.
Personality
Many contemporaries have suggested that Butler was always a good second-in-command; Macmillan himself suggested that “he lacked the last six inches of steel” necessary for leadership. Indeed, this judgment seems fair, given that Butler was generally a less-than-spectacular minister. Nevertheless, his ushering in of the Education Act of 1944 and his advocacy of economic and political consensus—“Butskellism”—have ensured him a political reputation that extends beyond mere partisan politics. Indeed, once described as “both irrepressible and unapproachable,” he was one of the most progressive Conservative leaders.
Connections
In 1926 he married Sydney Courtauld, heiress to the fortunes of the famous family that dominated the British chemical industry, and therewith obtained a financial settlement guaranteeing him £5,000 per year for life, tax free.