Richard Austen Butler (9 December 1902 – 8 March 1982), generally known as R. A. Butler and familiarly known from his initials as Rab, was a prominent British Conservative Party politician.
Butler was elected to Parliament for Saffron Walden in Essex at the 1929 general election and soon became a parliamentary assistant to Samuel Hoare, the leading Conservative politician associated with Indian policy. Butler attended the Second Round Table Conference, and in early 1932, he visited India on Lord Lothian's Franchise Committee, which recommended an increase in the Indian franchise. Butler became the youngest member of the government, at 29, in September 1932, when he was appointed Under-Secretary for India. In that position, he helped to steer the Government of India Act 1935, which granted provincial self-government to India through the Commons in the teeth of strong opposition from Winston Churchill, who spoke for much of the rank-and-file Conservative opinion in the country.
Between May 1937 and February 1938, Butler served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour. In February 1938, Butler was moved to be Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, serving under Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Butler, who was often the main government foreign affairs spokesman in the Commons, was a strong supporter of the appeasement of Nazi Germany and supported Chamberlain's efforts to negotiate with Adolf Hitler in September 1938, which culminated in the Munich Agreement. After Hitler broke the agreement by occupying Prague in March 1939, Butler continued urging rapprochement with Germany and, up to the very outbreak of war, opposing Britain going to war for the sake of Poland. After the outbreak of war, he continued to hanker towards a compromise peace, and in June 1940 he had a mysterious meeting with the Swedish trade envoy Björn Prytz at which he declared that British attitudes to peace would be based on "common sense, not bravado". Thereafter, he retained his position at the Foreign Office until July 1941 but appears to have been kept away from serious decision-making.
Butler's later claims in his memoirs (1971) that he had supported appeasement merely to gain time for British re-armament are not supported by contemporary evidence. Although Butler went on to hold many senior Cabinet offices, his reputation as an appeaser dogged him later in his career and would be one of the factors that cost him the party leadership in 1957 and 1963.
Backbench MP Butler was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Saffron Walden in the 1929 general election and held the seat until his retirement in 1965. His father advised him that he lacked facility for executive decision making and that he should aim to become Speaker.Matthew 2004, p200 He also warned him in 1926 not to acquire a reputation as a bore by specialising in Indian affairs in Parliament. He then advised him in 1929 that he should either devote his life to India as he himself had done or aim to come out later as a provincial governor or even as Viceroy.Howard 1987, pp. 47–48.
Before being elected to Parliament he became private secretary to Samuel Hoare. Butler was one of a number of young MPs who had a sharp exchange of letters in The Times (27–28 May 1930) with Harold Macmillan, who was then out of Parliament, over the Mosley Memorandum. Macmillan had suggested that the "game" of politics was "hardly worth bothering to play at all" if governments were not willing to adopt radical solutions to reduce unemployment. Butler replied that if that was his view he should seek a "pastime more suited to his talents". Butler recorded that the whips had "chuckled" at the letter, but it may have contributed the enmity that Macmillan, who would be a backbench rebel in the 1930s, when Butler was a rising ministerial star, felt towards him in later years.Butler 1971, p. 27.
In 1930, Butler referred to the rebels against Stanley Baldwin's leadership, led by the Press Barons Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook, as the "Forty Thieves". He wrote of "Brigadier-General this and Colonel that" amongst Conservative backbenchers and thought Beaverbrook to be "green and apeish".Howard 1987, p. 43. Butler supported Duff Cooper in the Westminster St George's by-election in March 1931.Jago 2015, p.64-5
India Office Minister Parliamentary Private Secretary and appointment as junior minister In August 1931, when the National Government was formed, Butler was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to India Secretary Samuel Hoare. The India Committee, one of whose leading lights was Winston Churchill, had been formed to resist plans for greater Indian self-government after the Gandhi–Irwin Pact. Butler's wife, Sydney had written to his mother that she would "pray for snow and sleet" if Mahatma Gandhi visited London in his loincloth.Howard 1987, p. 46. As PPS, Butler was Hoare's eyes and ears at the Second Round Table Conference then in progress and was soon impressed by Gandhi.Howard 1987, pp. 49–50. He was sent to India on Lord Lothian's Franchise Committee, one of three committees that were set up as part of the Round Table Conference. He left in January 1932 and returned on 21 May. The Committee recommended an increase in the Indian electorate from 7 million to 36 million.Howard 1987, pp. 52–53.
Butler returned to find himself now a joint PPS with Micky Knatchbull, MP for Ashford in Kent. Butler soon re-established himself as Hoare's main adviser and persuaded him to attend the Conservative Conference at Blackpool that October at which Churchill was planning to move a motion that was critical of the government's Indian policy.Howard 1987, p. 55. He was given his first ministerial job as Under-Secretary of State for India (29 September 1932) when Lord Lothian resigned, along with the rest of Herbert Samuel's Official Liberals, over the National Government's abandonment of free trade.Howard 1987, pp. 55–56. At 29, Butler was the youngest member of the government.
White paper and Joint Select Committee The government published a white paper in March 1933 that contained proposals for Indian Home Rule.Butler 1971, p.46 At the end of March, Butler had to open for the government on the last day of the debate on the proposals. He called for a Joint Select Committee of Both Houses to examine the recent White Paper and make proposals for a bill. Expecting a fierce response from Churchill, he compared himself (29 March) to "a bullock calf tied to a tree, awaiting the arrival of the Lord of the Forest" and added that the tiger would be shot by riflemen when tempted out.Howard 1987, p. 57.Jago 2015, p.75
One of Butler's jobs was to monitor opinion in the Parliamentary Party. In April 1933, he drew up a White List of 47 Conservative MPs who openly supported the White Paper and a Black List of 103 MPs, not including obvious ones like Churchill, whose names, Conservative Central Office recorded, should not be passed on to constituency associations that asked for a speaker on India.Stewart 1999, p.464
The Joint Select Committee began in April 1933.Butler 1971, p.53 The Union of Britain and India (UBI), a front organisation funded by Conservative Central Office, was launched on 20 May 1933.Howard 1987, p. 58. The UBI was dedicated to promoting Indian reform along the lines of the White Paper, albeit with "adequate safeguards". In setting up the UBI, Hoare, Butler and J. C. C. Davidson were in breach of their pledges, as members of the Joint Select Committee, to remain neutral and to consider the evidence without prejudice and so the depth of their involvement therefore had to be covered up. Butler's flat was frequently used for UBI meetings, and he later admitted in his memoirs that it had been difficult to get anybody to join it.Stewart 1999, pp.166-8 In 1933, Butler clashed with his future rival Harold Macmillan, a Conservative backbencher at the time, who refused to publish UBI propaganda from his family publishing house.Ball 2004, p.105
Butler was present for Baldwin's speech (28 June 1933) to the Central Council of the National Union of Conservative Associations which urged that India be kept out of party politics, rather than become the political issue that Ireland had been for previous generations. Butler thought that the presence of Neville Chamberlain at the meeting did more to sway Conservative opinion in Baldwin's favour.Stewart 1999, p.170
Butler was active speaking in the country in favour of implementing the planned reforms on behalf of the UBI. Butler faced significant opposition from Conservative activists in his constituency, including some who deplored the granting of independence to Ireland over a decade earlier and one woman who thought it wrong to give the vote to Indians as she believed them to be savages who were still fighting with bows and arrows.Howard 1987, pp. 60–61.
The Manchester Chamber of Commerce, representing the Lancashire cotton trade, initially objected to India having the right to impose tariffs on British goods. Churchill accused Hoare of having, with the aid of the Earl of Derby, breached parliamentary privilege by improperly influencing the Manchester Chamber of Commerce to drop its opposition. Butler disapproved of Churchill's actions, writing (19 April 1934) to Lord Brabourne (the former Micky Knatchbull, now Governor of Bombay) after Churchill had made his charges that "Winston developed his case with considerable force" and commenting on his alliance with Lloyd George, Clement Attlee (acting leader of the Labour Party) and Rothermere's Daily Mail which publicised his charges. He added that "The whole episode will certainly make Winston’s name stink more than it does at present with the reputable members of our party. I am inclined to think that it will do Winston down, whatever the effect it has on Sam [Hoare]". He added that Churchill's collusion with opposition leaders "should settle our party’s opinion of him". (Stanley Baldwin (28 April) thought that the episode proved Churchill to be "fundamentally a blackguard" guilty of "the dirtiest business I’ve ever encountered in politics".)Toye 2008, pp.306-7
By October 1934, Butler's White List had grown to 56 MPs, and his Black List had shrunk to 60. There were also 2 Grey White MPs, 4 White Grey, 36 Grey and 1 Black Grey.
Government of India Act After a year and a half, the Joint Select Committee reported in November 1934. A bill was drawn up, which Butler helped to pilot through the House of Commons in the first half of 1935. The bill was immensely long, containing 473 clauses and 16 schedules, and the debates took up 4,000 pages of Hansard.Butler 1971, p.55 During the passage of the bill, Churchill praised Butler in the House of Commons (5 June 1935) but not Hoare with whom Churchill had clashed badly after Churchill had accused him of interfering with the evidence of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce to the Joint Select Committee.Howard 1987, p. 63. Baldwin replaced Ramsay MacDonald as Prime Minister (7 June 1935) during the third reading of the bill. During the resulting reshuffle, Hoare became Foreign Secretary and was succeeded as India Secretary by Lord Zetland and so Butler had to steer the final stages of the bill through the House of Commons. Lord Dunglass attributed the success of the bill, which became the Government of India Act 1935, to him.Jago 2015, p79 The Act received Royal Assent on 2 August 1935.Butler 1971, pp.58-60