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At week's end, with his wife and ten-year-old daughter (the only one of four children still at home), he took his papers and thoughts down to the gracious 16th century country home in Essex. There, slipping into baggy slacks, he relaxed for an afternoon of pottering about the rose garden with his wife. Next day he read the lesson at the local Anglican church, where he is vicar's warden. In his constituency Rab is universally respected and frequently liked, by gentry and tradesmen alike. "They say he's a cold fish," snorted a retired admiral who often shoots with him. "That's nonsense. Of course, he does not wear his heart on his sleeve. But Rab stands for quality, sir, quality! And that's rare nowadays."
This weekend, at a church in nearby Littlebury, the vicar will pray: "Oh, God, who has taught us to pray concerning our daily bread, bless, we beseech Thee, Thy servant Richard Austen Butler in his gigantic task for our country this coming week." Two days later, to the traditional cries of "Yah, Yah, Yah!", Rab Butler will step to the clerks' table in the House of Commons, open the old red leather dispatch box once used by Gladstone and lay down the budget which will shape the British economy for the coming year.
No Seasickness. Within the cramping bounds of shortages, heavy taxation and debts, no modern British Chancellor, Tory or Laborite, has much room to maneuver. Many of the controls imposed by the Laborites were forced by shortages which would have driven Tories to the same restrictions; and many of Butler's concessions would have been made by a Socialist Chancellor as the shortages disappeared. But there is an important difference of spirit and aim.
As Budget Day approaches, British workers are demanding more wages—and in Britain's tight economy, higher wages mean an increase in export prices at a time when German and Japanese competition is rising. Exports to the vital U.S. market have already dropped as a result of the U.S. downturn. But Butler is cheerful; he likens the British reaction to an old lady on a cruise: "She locks herself up in the cabin and is a little seasick, more out of apprehension than because of rough seas. Then the steward knocks on the door and tells her: 'We are two days out, ma'am, and the weather is fine.' Now, like the old lady, we are walking the deck and feeling good."
Within his small maneuvering room, Butler faces opposition from the gunboat imperialists in his own ranks whose spokesman is Press Lord Beaverbrook; they are outraged by the recent pact with Japan, which allowed small quantities of Japanese textiles into Britain and lifted the ban on Japanese goods in the colonies. To those who cry that his policy is breaking up the Commonwealth, Rab retorts: "The Empire boys underestimate my intense belief in the Commonwealth. I believe it has resources which will make your eyes pop out. But this is 1954, not 1904. Australia, Canada, South Africa will not be denied association with the U.S. dollar, and on their own terms. We are dealing with a Commonwealth in modern dress." The aim, says Butler, "is to break outwards, to sell more, and thereby to import more—to enlarge the circle rather than contracting a vicious circle."