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 plans to reverse the 6d cut in income tax. Macmillan himself then threatened resignation if he were not allowed to make spending cuts instead. Butler was Rector of the University of Glasgow 1956–59. Butler was ill when Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal and was not formally a member of the Cabinet Egypt Committee. Butler later claimed that he had tried to keep Eden "in a political straitjacket" and advocated an open invasion of Egypt. Gilmour writes that this would have attracted even more international opprobrium than Eden's pretence of enforcing international law. Butler seemed to be doubtful of