Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

HC S: [Tribute to Lord Butler]

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: House of Commons
Source: Hansard HC [19/845-46]
Editorial comments:
Importance ranking: Minor
Word count: 713
[column 845]

Tribute to Lord Butler of Saffron Walden

The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher)

With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to express the great sense of loss which the country and Parliament have sustained by the death of Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, and to extend our sympathy to his family, especially to my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Butler).

Rab Butler was one of the greatest statesmen and most distinguished personalities of our time. He was, indeed, a giant of his generation. His long, busy, active life was dominated by one overriding purpose—to serve his country and his fellow men.

He was determined to continue his family tradition of public service. His father had been Governor of the Central Provinces in India and Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Rab's early years were a characteristically meticulous preparation for the path which he had chosen to follow. At Cambridge he won a double first and became President of the Union. At the age of 27 he was elected to this House and represented the same constituency without interruption for 36 years before he went to another place.

He was in office for 26 out of those 36 years, half of them as a member of the Cabinet. Within three years of his arrival in the House of Commons he became Under-Secretary at the India Office, and then at the Foreign Office, before becoming Minister of Education in 1941. It was in that capacity that I first heard him speak—at Oxford.

His four years in that Department were among the most rewarding of his life. He regarded the Education Act of 1944 as a deep and abiding contribution to the future of his country. Then followed a brief spell as Minister of Labour.

After the defeat of his party in 1945, Rab was the major intellectual force in refashioning policy for the post-war world. Mr. Churchill appointed him as chairman of the research department and no chairman has ever exercised as powerful or as lasting an influence as Rab.

He became Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first post-war Conservative Government. His first Budget Statement, delivered 30 years ago tomorrow, concluded with these words:

“We must now set forth, braced and resolute, to show the world that we shall regain our solvency and, with it, our national greatness.” —[Official Report, 11 March 1952; Vol. 497, c. 1305.]

Rab was a patriot, a scholar and a statesman. Whether at the Treasury or as Leader of the House, as Lord Privy Seal or Home Secretary, as First Secretary of State or Foreign Secretary, his patriotism, his scholarship, as well as his genius as a politician, shone through.

Twice during those years, in 1957 and in 1963, he suffered grievous disappointment. He allowed neither event to diminish his zeal or his work for the cause which he served throughout his life.

Although we remember him primarily as a statesman and politician, there were two other aspects of Rab's life which meant so much to him. He was devoted to the cause of learning. He was High Steward of Cambridge university for six years and Chancellor of Sheffield university and of the university of Essex. But nothing gave him greater pride [column 846]than his presidency of the Royal Society of Literature and his mastership of Trinity. It was singularly fitting that he, with so much experience at home and abroad, with a deep understanding of our constitution, should have been master when the heir to the throne became an undergraduate at Trinity.

Throughout his arduous life, Rab was supported by a loving family. His first wife died in 1954. He married again in 1959 and Lady Butler brought a new comfort and purpose into his life.

The last 17 years of Rab's life were spent out of office, but they, like the earlier years, were filled with achievement and the pride of a united family, and all the while the sometimes indiscreet but always lovable sense of humour kept coming through.

On the day that Winston Churchill resigned in 1955, Rab wrote to him saying:

“this time with you has given me … the strength to face all things quietly.”

He ended with the words of St. Augustine:

“Let nothing disturb thee, Let nothing affright thee, All passeth away, God alone will stay, Patience obtaineth all things.”

Those words are also a fitting tribute to the man whom we honour today.