Word: butler
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...treaty was not achieved by agitators sitting down in the public highway, but by statesmen sitting around the conference table." And he offered some invigorating invective against the "immature nonsense of socialism," which is trying to turn Great Britain into Little England. In a fourth Conservative election victory, said Butler, his party "must reject and repudiate these absurd aberrations of the left-wing mind...
RICHARD AUSTEN BUTLER, a parliamentary pundit once observed, "always looks as if he will be the next Prime Minister-until it seems the throne may actually be vacant." Butler has been deputy to all three postwar Tory Prime Ministers-Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan -and after the 1956 Suez debacle had every expectation of succeeding Eden at 10 Downing Street. When the party picked Macmillan instead, "Rab" Butler, though bitterly humiliated, said bravely: "Well, it is something to have been almost Prime Minister...
...Member of Parliament for 34 of his 60 years, Butler is a dedicated organization man who nonetheless takes irreverent delight in the impish indiscretion and bland ambivalence. When Eden's ditherings with economic and colonial problems stirred angry criticism in 1956, it was Butler who declared slyly: "He is the best Prime Minister we have." He once said that Britain's sacrosanct civil service is "a bit like a Rolls-Royce-you know it's the best machine in the world, but you're not quite sure what to do with it." His sallies have earned...
When Churchill became Prime Minister, he could not forgive Butler for having defended Chamberlain's actions, but he recognized Rab's talents and in 1941 offered him a choice between the important Ministry of Information and the backwater Board of Education. Remote as it was from the war effort, Butler plumped for education, knowing that it would be one of the key areas of postwar social reform. When he thanked Churchill for the job, legend has it that the Prime Minister retorted: "I meant it as an in sult." Nonetheless, the highly acclaimed Butler Act in 1944 became...
...importance of the individual in a "property-owning democracy" and redefined Conservatism as a "policy of humanity and common sense." Almost as important to the party's future as his New Conservatism were "Rab's Boys," the bright young back-room protégés whom Butler enlisted to help formulate policy. Among them: Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling, House Leader and Party Co-Chairman Iain Macleod, Lord Privy Seal Ted Heath. According to a House of Commons quip, "Rab gave Macmillan his brains...