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 Test Ban Treaty), Reginald Maudling (Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a remit to reinflate the economy going into the next General Election) and Edward Heath (in charge of the EEC entry negotiations), from amongst whom he hoped to groom an alternative successor. By 1962, Howard writes, "Macmillan had come to regard Rab as a trout that he could tickle and play with at will". Butler told Tony Benn in February 1963 that he expected Macmillan to stay on and fight the next general election, which could occur no later than 1964. During the Profumo affair, in which Macmillan's government almost