Richard Austen Butler was a British Conservative politician who rose to fame during his tenure as the Education Minister
Rab Butler
@Former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Facts and Childhood
Dec 9, 1902
Biography
Personal Details
- Birthday: December 9, 1902
- Died on: March 8, 1982
- Nationality: British
- Famous: Former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Leaders, Political Leaders
- Known as: Richard Austen Butler Butler of Saffron Walden
- Childrens: Adam Butler
- Universities:
- Pembroke College
- Cambridge
- Marlborough College
Rab Butler born at
Attock
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Birth Place
Rab Butler married Sydney Elizabeth Courtauld in 1926. They had four children. His wife died of cancer in 1954.
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Personal Life
In 1959, he married Mollie Courtauld, the widow of Augustine Courtauld.
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Personal Life
He died on 8 March 1982 in Essex and is buried in the churchyard of the parish church of St Mary the Virgin in Saffron Walden.
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Personal Life
He was born as Richard Austen Butler in Attock Serai, Attock, in India (now in Punjab, Pakistan), on 9 December 1902 to Sir Montagu Sherard Dawes Butler and his wife, Anne Gertrude. Several members of his extended family were prominent public servants and educators. He was better known by the name of “Rab”.
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Childhood & Early Life
He injured his right arm as a child and it never fully recovered. Because of this he could not get any military experience and this proved to be a handicap in his political career.
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Childhood & Early Life
He first went to Marlborough College before moving on to Pembroke College, Cambridge where he was the President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1924. He graduated with a BA the same year. For a brief period of time he taught nineteenth-century French history at Cambridge.
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Childhood & Early Life
Rab Butler entered politics in 1929 when he was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Saffron Walden in the general election. He would hold this seat until his retirement in 1965.
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Career
He served for a short while as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the India Secretary, Samuel Hoare before being given his first ministerial job as Under-Secretary of State for India in 1932, a post he held for the next five years.
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Career
He was Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Labour in 1937-1938.
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Career
In 1938 he was made Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Neville Chamberlain's government. He was a staunch supporter of Prime Minister Chamberlain and the government's policy of appeasement of Nazi Germany.
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Career
Rab Butler received his first Cabinet post in 1941 when he was appointed President of the Board of Education in the government of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. At that time his appointment to the Board of Education was viewed as a tactic to remove him from the more sensitive Foreign Office. Nonetheless, Butler brought about a revolution in the country’s education system in this position.
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Career
Rab Butler rose to prominence as the Education Minister with the enactment of the Education Act 1944. The act introduced the Tripartite System of secondary education and for the first time in the U.K. provided for free secondary education for all pupils. The act is credited to have led to a huge increase in the number of girls receiving school education.
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Major Work