Word: butler
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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London provided an opportunity to observe at firsthand the political leaders of Great Britain arguing bitterly against each other in preparation for a national election. On the Conservative side the American business leaders talked with Foreign Secretary Rab Butler, Board of Trade President Edward Heath and Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling; in Labor's camp they interviewed Party Leader Harold Wilson and Deputy George Brown...
...Douglas-Home's shrewdest appointments, to the crucial job of party chairman, was Labor Minister John Hare, 52, a hardworking, true-blue Tory. As for Sir Alec's defeated rival for the prime ministership, Rab Butler, he had always wanted to be Foreign Secretary (Harold Macmillan denied him the job), and Rab made his debut last week at a Western European Union conference at The Hague with complete professional aplomb...
Next morning, arriving on the steps of No. 10, Home had a bright wish: "I hope everyone on this fine Saturday morning can forget about politics, except me." Not a chance. Back came Butler to surrender. Then, at last, the hour of glory: Home's appearance on the doorstep, his smiling announcement that he was off to see the Queen, the quiet talk with Elizabeth in the Buckingham Palace audience chamber as sun softened the palace gardens and a military band played for the changing of the guard in the forecourt. Had he been able to form a government...
Outwardly at least came the inevitable closing of the ranks. This week Home announced his new Cabinet containing the solid Tories, including Butler (named Foreign Secretary), Hailsham and Maudling (in their old jobs) and Heath (named President of the Board of Trade). Missing: Iain Macleod, co-chairman of the Tory Party, one of the rebels who could not reconcile himself to the way Home was chosen...
...Labor Party is already in full cry. Describing the Tory selection process as viciously undemocratic, the Laborite Daily Mirror wrote: "Butler has been betrayed, Maudling insulted, Macleod ignored, Heath treated with contempt and Hailsham giggled out of court by the jester in hospital." Deriding the Tories' "aristocratic cabal," Harold Wilson last week took aim and declared scornfully: "In this ruthlessly competitive, scientific, technical, industrial age, a week of intrigues has produced a result based on family and hereditary connections. The leader has emerged-an elegant anachronism...