(4 of 9)
Boring & Sound. The pale young man with the donnish air was no overnight success. His speeches—meticulously prepared, subtly reasoned, peppered with quiet wit—bored the House. But the ability to bore is rather well regarded in the House of Commons as a sign of soundness. Rab turned from oratory to committee and administrative work to prove his soundness. He was cautious, he was courteous, he never spoke out of turn, he never spoke unless well prepared. His voice was as clear as his logic. "The bullyboys may make the headlines," said a colleague, "but it is to the young Rabs that Tory leaders look for their successors." In 1931, Sir Samuel Hoare, then Secretary of State for India, made Rab his parliamentary private secretary, sent him to India to discuss the bill which was to give India a federal constitution and eventual dominion status. Soon, with the sponsorship of Stanley Baldwin, Butler was promoted to Under Secretary. When Hoare fell ill during debate, Rab took his place at the dispatch box. He knew India, and he knew his bill. Attacked from the left for going too slowly, abused from the right by Winston Churchill and the diehard imperialists for going too far, Rab skillfully stood his ground, pushed the bill through. He was then 32.
In 1938 Eden resigned from the Foreign Office in protest against Neville Chamberlain's policies of appeasement, and was replaced by Lord Halifax. Chamberlain picked Butler as Under Secretary. With the Foreign Secretary in the House of Lords, if was often Butler's job to defend policy in the Commons. While Churchill cried havoc from the back benches, Butler loyally defended Munich and Mussolini's Italy in his maddeningly tranquil voice, became famed for his equivocal replies to awkward questions. The exasperated and jittery Commons nicknamed him "Stonewall Butler," and Lloyd George called him "the artful dodger."
Butler still squirms unhappily over this period. "There were weaknesses in those policies, but there are many things about those days which are still unknown to the public," he explains uncomfortably. ''Then, you know, an Under Secretary doesn't make policy." He also points out that after the fall of Chamberlain, both Churchill and Eden asked him to stay on at the Foreign Office. "So they couldn't have been too fed up with me."
Plow & Shafts. Rab survived, with a typical combination of foresight and luck. In 1941 Churchill offered him the choice of the Ministry of Information or the Board of Education, a wartime backwater. True to family tradition, Butler was deeply interested in education. But, though Hitler was then racing for Moscow, Butler also foresaw that the education job would give him a major hand in shaping Tory postwar policy. He chose education.
While the Nazis bombed London, Rab talked and planned for peace. Starting with a bill already in draft, he planned a postwar revolution in the educational system which would make primary and secondary education (up to the age of 15) free to all children. Said he: "I do not want our state educational system to become a racing stable, out only to produce overbred classic favorites. We want to produce our racers, but we also want to produce good healthy stock, frightened neither of the plow nor of the shafts."