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 Parliament in 1950) ensuring Conservative acceptance of the welfare state and a commitment to keeping unemployment low. Macmillan acknowledged Butler's role in his memoirs, whilst stressing that these were the very policies he had promoted in vain in the 1930s. Butler enjoyed 26.5 years in office, equalled only by Churchill in the twentieth century. Jago argues that the Latin tag which Butler applied to Eden, "omnium consensu capax imperii nisi imperasset" ("by common consent fit to rule until he ruled"), could have been applied just as accurately to Butler himself. He argues that Butler was possibly the best Chancellor of