Political career of Rab Butler: 1929–1941 Haushofer, a foreign policy advisor to Rudolf Hess, listed Butler as somebody in London who was likely to be sympathetic to peace talks. 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
Rab Butler century, under any circumstances whatever". Powell and Macleod both refused to serve under Home. Butler had planned to make Macleod Chancellor of the Exchequer and discussed the names of economists who could be asked to advise. Butler was less devastated than in 1957, as this time it was largely a voluntary abnegation. In a BBC radio interview in 1978 he discussed that in 1963, he had been passed over in favour of a "terrific gent", not a "most ghastly walrus". Home and even Macmillan, himself in the 1980s, later conceded that it might have been better if Butler had become