Political career of Rab Butler: 1929–1941 Political career of Rab Butler: 1929–1941 Richard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden, (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 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 early in 1932 he visited India on Lord Lothian's Franchise Committee, which recommended an increase in the Indian franchise.
Rab Butler leaked to them) were advised never to believe anything Rab Butler told them, but never to ignore anything he told them either. Ian Gilmour argues that Butler was always more popular in the country than in his own party, and that he acquired an unjust reputation for deviousness but was in fact less so than a number of his colleagues. "The Guardian" and the "Daily Mirror" praised him (on his return to Cambridge in June 1965) but wrote that he had lacked the ruthless streak needed to get to the very top in politics. "The Economist" (27 June 1970) called