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 that or a diplomatic post to remove him from the more sensitive Foreign Office. However, he had been keen to leave the Foreign Office, and press stories that he had previously declined Cabinet positions were misinformed. His biographer argues that the promotion was not, contrary to Butler's own later insinuations (such as that Churchill had talked of "wiping babies' bottoms"), intended as an insult. At the time, Butler recorded that Churchill had demanded more patriotic history teaching: "Tell the children that Wolfe won Quebec". Butler was also the chair of the War Cabinet Committee for the Control of Official Histories.