Rab Butler Rab Butler 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. "The Times" obituary called him "the creator of the modern educational system, the key-figure in the revival of post-war Conservatism, arguably the most successful chancellor since the war and unquestionably a Home Secretary of reforming zeal." He was one of his party's leaders in promoting the post-war consensus through which the major parties largely agreed on the main points of domestic policy until
Rab Butler new Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax in the House of Lords, Butler was the main Foreign Office spokesman in the House of Commons. In internal foreign office discussions after the Anschluss of Austria, Butler counselled against a British guarantee to go to war to defend Czechoslovakia, and approved of the Cabinet decision (22 March) not to give one (he later omitted these facts from his memoirs). Butler spent most of the Sudeten Crisis at a meeting in Geneva about reform of the Covenant of the League of Nations. He strongly approved of Chamberlain’s trip to Berchtesgaden (16 September), even if it