Rab butler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rab Butler (1963)

Richard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden , KG , CH , PC (* 9. December 1902 in Attock Serai , British India , † 8. March 1982 in Great Yeldham , Essex ), known as RA Butler or Rab Butler was a British Conservative politician. Long talked about as the future prime minister, today he is mainly associated with the term Butskellism as a synonym for the post-war consensus , which he was named after (together with Labor politician Hugh Gaitskell ).

Youth, training, starting a family

Butler was born in British India, the oldest of four children, and grew up there until he was ten. His father, Sir Montague Butler, was an Indian Civil Service official who later became governor of India's central provinces and was knighted. Butler received his training at Marlborough College and Pembroke College , Cambridge. There he successfully studied modern languages ​​and history; he was also President of the Cambridge Union Society.

In 1926 he married Sydney Elizabeth Courtauld, the daughter of the textile magnate Samuel Courtauld . His father-in-law provided him with an annual annuity of £ 5,000 and several estates. Butler and his wife lived together in Essex and had four children: Sir Richard C Butler (1929–2012), Adam Courtauld Butler (1931–2008), Samuel James Butler (born 1936) and Sarah Teresa Butler (born 1944). After his wife died of cancer in December 1954 , butler married Mollie Courtauld (née Montgomerie) in September 1959.

Political career

1955 in Churchill's cabinet. Butler seated, third from the right.

His father-in-law's relationships enabled Butler to run for the secure seat at Saffron Walden. There he was elected to the lower house for the Conservatives in 1929 , a member of which he remained until 1965. As secretary to Sir Samuel Hoare , after the conservative Tories came back to power in 1931, he was appointed to the Ministry of India , where he was promoted to undersecretary in 1932. In 1938 he moved to the Foreign Office , where he also became Undersecretary of State . Unlike his later competitor Harold Macmillan , Butler supported Neville Chamberlain 's policy of appeasement ; in later decades Butler was repeatedly adversely associated with this support. When Chamberlain finally resigned in 1940, he tried unsuccessfully to persuade Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax to succeed him. He was also initially critical of Chamberlain's successor Winston Churchill . In 1941 he was appointed by Churchill to his war government and took over the education department . In 1944 he was responsible for the progressive Education Act. In the interim government of 1945 he was Minister of Labor for two months . After the election defeat of the Conservatives in the parliamentary elections of 1945 , Churchill entrusted him with the task of renewing the party as chairman of the Conservative Research Department .

In 1951 the Conservatives won a narrow election . Butler became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Churchill's cabinet . During this time the term Butskellism came up. In an editorial in The Economist , Norman Macrae had written of a fictional Mr. Butskell because Butler's budget plans were very little different from those of his Labor predecessor, Hugh Gaitskell. 1953 Churchill suffered a severe stroke while (his de facto crown prince) Sir Anthony Eden in the United States was staying in order to have surgery on the gallbladder to undergo. At this stage Butler was effectively the head of the government.

After Churchill's resignation in 1955, Eden was his successor; Butler initially stayed in the Treasury and represented Eden during his foreign policy trips. However, Eden soon planned to remove Butler from the Treasury Department and replace him with Harold Macmillan. In Eden's cabinet reshuffle, Macmillan replaced Butler as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Eden Macmillan also promised that Butler would not be a Deputy Prime Minister and would not be above Macmillan's rank. Butler took on both the function of Leader of the House of Commons and the office of Lord Seal Keeper in exchange for the office of the Exchequer . Although both high-profile positions, they marked a definite decline for Butler. Oliver Crookshank (also a close friend of Macmillan's) warned Butler that by agreeing to this demotion he would commit “sheer political suicide”. During the Suez Crisis , Butler exhibited a critical attitude and was reluctant to support Eden's course of confrontation; However, he was silent for reasons of cabinet discipline and because he did not want to be perceived as an appeaser again. After the total failure of the Anglo-French intervention, Eden suffered a collapse in health and went on vacation to Jamaica . Butler took over the representation again. A few weeks later, Eden resigned. Although Butler had been discussed as the upcoming Prime Minister, to the surprise of the public, he was unable to prevail against Macmillan. In a cabinet vote held by Lord Salisbury , a clear majority voted for Macmillan. On Salisbury's advice, Winston Churchill, Chief Whip Edward Heath, and Chairman of the 1922 backbench committee , John Morrison , were also asked for their views; all were also in favor of Macmillan.

Butler accepted this decision and became Home Secretary in Macmillan's cabinet, who denied him the office of Foreign Secretary in favor of Selwyn Lloyd . In this capacity, with Macmillan's approval, he embarked on a major reform program. Reforms have been carried out in the judicial system and the existing rules on licensing , gambling and prostitution have been relaxed.

From 1959 to 1961 Butler was also chairman of the Conservative Party. In July 1962, Macmillan carried out a major cabinet reshuffle, known as the " Night of the Long Knives, " and dismissed seven cabinet members. Butler had previously committed an indiscretion towards the press magnate Lord Rothermere and mentioned the cabinet reshuffle planned for the autumn at a joint dinner. When Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail reported on Macmillan's plans under the title Mac's Master Plan the following day, Macmillan suspected Butler's indiscretion was a deliberate ruse to overthrow him and was forced to act rashly.

When Macmillan resigned in 1963, Butler was again a promising successor. Again, however, he was unable to prevail and the Macmillan-sponsored Alec Douglas-Home was named Prime Minister in a controversial process. Although Butler Home could have blocked Home's appointment by refusing to join his cabinet (especially after Enoch Powell and Iain Macleod both refused to join Home under Home), Butler accepted Home's invitation to serve as Secretary of State . He is thus one of only three British politicians to have held these three offices.

He had been a member of the House of Lords since 1965, when he was raised to life peer as Baron Butler of Saffron Walden , of Halstead in the County of Essex , having previously turned down a hereditary title of nobility. In the same year he received his Masters at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was also First Chancellor of the University of Essex from 1966 to 1982 . In 1971 he was accepted into the Order of the Garter as a Knight Companion . From 1972 to 1975 he was chairman of the so-called Butler Committee, which sought reforms in dealing with behaviorally disturbed offenders .

Butler died in Essex in 1982, his grave is in St Mary the Virgin Cemetery in Saffron Walden. His son Adam Butler was also a politician and from 1970 to 1987 a member of the House of Commons, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher he also served as junior minister for a few years.

memory

In addition to the inextricably linked concept of Butskellism as a synonym for the British welfare state after the Second World War, Butler is associated with numerous laws and reforms. In historiography he is regularly named by historians (along with Austen Chamberlain and George Nathaniel Curzon ) as the most important British politician who never became Prime Minister.

Autobiography

  • The Art of the Possible: The Memoirs of Lord Butler . Hamish Hamilton, London 1971, ISBN 978-0-241-02007-4 (English).

Literature on Rab Butler

  • Mollie Butler: August and Rab: A Memoir . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1987, ISBN 978-0-297-79147-8 (in English).
  • Patrick Cosgrave: RABUTLER: An English Life . Quartet Books, London 1983, ISBN 978-0-7043-3437-3 (English-language biography).
  • Anthony Howard : Rab: The Life of RA Butler . Jonathan Cape, London 1987 ISBN 978-0-224-01862-3 (English-language biography).
  • Peter Hennessy: Having It So Good: Britain In The Fifties . Penguin Books, 2006, ISBN 978-0-14-100409-9 (English).
  • Michael Jago: Rab Butler: The Best Prime Minister We Never Had? . Biteback Publishing, 2015, ISBN 978-1-84954-920-2 (English).
  • Giles Radice : Odd Couples: The Great Political Pairings of Modern Britain . IBTauris, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-78076-280-7 (English, chapter Macmillan and Butler ).
  • Dominic Sandbrook: Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles , Abacus 2005, ISBN 978-0-349-14127-5 (in English, about Great Britain from 1956 to 1963).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Giles Radice: Odd Couples: The Great Political Pairings of Modern Britain . IBTauris, London 2015, p. 87
  2. ^ Dominic Sandbrook: Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles . Little Brown, London 2006
  3. ^ Giles Radice: Odd Couples: The Great Political Pairings of Modern Britain . IBTauris, London 2015, p. 89
  4. ^ Dominic Sandbrook: Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles . Little Brown, London 2006
  5. ^ John Colville: The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries 1939-1955 . WW Norton & Company, London 1985, p. 122
  6. ^ Roy Jenkins: Portraits and Miniatures . Macmillan, London 1993, p. 12
  7. ↑ The unacknowledged giant. The Economist, June 17, 2010, accessed May 4, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Douglas Hurd: Choose your Weapons. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2010, p. 349f.
  9. ↑ Douglas Hurd: Choose your Weapons. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2010, p. 358.
  10. ^ Anthony Howard: Rab: The Life of RA Butler . Jonathan Cape, London 1987, p. 221
  11. ↑ Keith Kyle: Suez: Britain's End of Empire in the Middle East . IBTauris, London 2011, p. 534
  12. ↑ DR Thorpe: Supermac - The Life of Harold Macmillan. Chatto & Windus, London 2010, p. 521.
  13. ^ The legacy of Macmillan's 'Night of the Long Knives'. BBC, July 6, 2012, accessed June 19, 2015 .
  14. ^ Charles Williams, Harold Macmillan. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2009, p. 448 ff
  15. ^ Roy Jenkins: Portraits and Miniatures . Macmillan, London 1993, p. 17
  16. ^ DR Thorpe, The Uncrowned Prime Ministers, Darkhorse Publishing, London 1980
  17. ^ Roy Jenkins: Portraits and Miniatures . Macmillan, London 1993, p. 1
personal data
SURNAME Butler, Rab
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Butler, Richard Austen, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Conservative politician, Member of the House of Commons
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Attock Serai , British India
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 1982
Place of death Great Yeldham , Essex