Rab Butler

Richard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden (9 December 1902 – 8 March 1982), also known as R. A. Butler and familiarly known from his initials as Rab, was a prominent British Conservative Party politician; he was effectively deputy prime minister to Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, although he only held the official title for a brief period in 1962–63. He was one of his party's leaders in promoting the post-war consensus through which the major parties largely agreed on the main points of domestic policy until the 1970s; it is sometimes known as "Butskellism" from a fusion of his name with that of his Labour counterpart, Hugh Gaitskell.

Born into a family of academics and Indian administrators, Butler had a distinguished academic career before he entered Parliament in 1929. As a junior minister, he helped to pass the Government of India Act 1935. He strongly supported the appeasement of Nazi Germany in 1938 to 1939.

Entering the Cabinet in 1941, he served as President of the Board of Education (1941–1945) and oversaw the Education Act 1944. When the Conservatives returned to power in 1951, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1951–1955), Home Secretary (1957–1962), First Secretary of State (1962–1963) and Foreign Secretary (1963–1964). Butler had an exceptionally long ministerial career and was one of only two British politicians (the other being John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon) to have served in three of the four Great Offices of State, but not to have been prime minister for which he was passed over in 1957 and 1963. At the time, the Conservative leadership was decided by a process of private consultation, rather than by a formal vote.

After retiring from politics in 1965, Butler was appointed Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and served until 1978. He died of colon cancer in 1982.

Butler's paternal family had a long and distinguished association with the University of Cambridge, dating back to his great-grandfather George Butler. His great-uncle Henry Montagu Butler was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Dean of Gloucester, and his uncle Sir Geoffrey G. Butler, a Cambridge historian and Conservative MP for the university. His father was a Fellow and later Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Butler's maternal grandfather, George Smith, was Principal of Doveton Boys College, Calcutta.

Richard Austen Butler was born 9 December 1902 in Attock, British India, the eldest son of Montagu Sherard Dawes Butler, a member of the Indian Civil Service, and Anne Smith. He had two sisters, Iris (1905–2002), who married Lieutenant-Colonel Gervase Portal (1890–1961) and became a writer, and Dorothy (1909–1999), the wife of Laurence Middleton (1905–1982). His younger brother John (1914–1943) was killed in an air crash on active service in January 1943. In July 1909, at the age of six, Butler's right arm was broken in three places in a riding accident, which left his right hand permanently disabled. He attended a preparatory school in Hove but rebelled against going to Harrow School, where most of his family were educated. Having failed to win a scholarship to Eton College, he instead attended Marlborough College, leaving in December 1920.

In June 1921, Butler won an exhibition to Pembroke College, Cambridge. At that stage, he planned a career in the Diplomatic Service. He entered Pembroke College in October of that year and became President of the Cambridge Union Society for Easter (summer) term of 1924. Initially studying French and German, he graduated in 1925 with one of the highest first-class degrees in history in the university. He was elected a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and gave lectures on the politics of the French Third Republic. At Cambridge, he met Sydney Courtauld; after they married in 1926, his father-in-law awarded him an income of £5,000 a year after tax for life, which was comparable to a Cabinet Minister's salary and gave him the financial freedom to pursue a political career.