Portraits and Miniatures(4)

In all these circumstances he built up remarkably little resentment in Churchill. His subsequent relations with him were obviously (in retrospect although by no means necessarily in advance) to turn out to be much more important than with Baldwin, for whom his affection was real and personal, or with Chamberlain whom he served so faithfully in the appeasement years, and to whom, in the company of Alec Home, Chips Channon and Jock Colville (whose presence as the future chronicler of the life of St Winston renders the occasion almost respectable), he drank a toast, on May 10th 1940, as ‘the King [already just] over the water’. Churchill, who was by no means always magnanimous even in victory and very rarely so in defeat, had paid Rab a high tribute for his parliamentary skill at the end of the India Bill struggles in 1935, and had markedly failed to extend this to Hoare. And in 1940 he first kept him in the new coalition government with the elliptical tribute that he ‘could go on with [his] delicate manner of answering parliamentary questions without giving anything away’, and then refrained from sacking him when, at the time of the fall of France, Butler engaged in a highly indiscreet ‘peace feeler’ conversation with the head of the Swedish Legation in London.

This latter restraint may have been because no one knew better than Churchill, following the two days of War Cabinet discussion on 27 and 28 May 1940, that the under-secretary’s desire for a negotiated peace was exceeded by that of his ministerial chief, and that to have got rid of Butler while leaving Halifax immune would have been a classic example of shooting the monkey rather than the organ grinder. But it probably owed at least as much to a somewhat mocking affection Churchill was developing for Rab. In The Art of the Possible Butler gives a memorable description of being bidden to ‘dine and sleep’ at Chequers in March 1943. At mid-morning the next day he was summoned to the bedroom where Churchill lay smoking a cigar and stroking a black cat, although working hard at the same time. Rab was asked to assent to the proposition that the cat did more for the war effort than did he (then Minister of Education), for it provided Churchill with a hot-water bottle and saved fuel and power. Rab delicately declined to agree but said that it was a very beautiful cat, which seemed to please Churchill.

There may have been more symbolism in the occasion than Rab realized. I think Churchill felt towards him rather as he did towards the cat. He was aware that Butler regarded him with detachment, but found Rab useful, up to a point elegant, capable both of being stroked and pushed off the bed when he was fed up with him, and in a sense easy because he was so utterly unlike himself. He appointed Butler President of the Board of Education (as it was then called) because he thought he deserved promotion (he had been a parliamentary under-secretary for nine years), wanted him out of the Foreign Office, and believed he would keep quiet a sector of the home front that bored Churchill. The last thing the Prime Minister wanted was a major and controversial measure of educational reform.

Rab’s tactical skill was to see that he could make such a measure major only if he could also negotiate it out of controversy. To his ultimately successful progress to this end there were considerable setbacks. One was when the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster wrote to The Time a letter which combined (a by no means impossible feat) a highly conservative approach with a skilful appeal to Labour sympathy. Churchill is alleged to have cut it out and sent it to Rab with the scribbled message: ‘There you are, fixed, old cock.’ The tone, bantering, friendly, half dismissive but without total assurance that the aim would be achieved, almost perfectly captured Churchill’s attitude to Butler. Its authenticity is, however, in doubt for there was no record of it except in Rab’s memory, and no one was more addicted than Rab to making up stories at least superficially hostile to himself, in which the punchline owed more to verisimilitude than to fact.

The important practical outcome, however, was that Butler got his Education Act, which was so well prepared that it lasted with credit for nearly half a century, was sufficient of a personal achievement for it rightly and unusually to be commonly referred to by his name, and that Churchill subsequently continued, half reluctantly, to give him great opportunities. This was so when he allowed him to reform Conservative Party policy after 1945 (which resulted in Butler and Lord Woolton, who was similarly engaged in reforming the Conservative Party machine, becoming mortal enemies), and it was still more strikingly so when he gave him the Chancellorship of the Exchequer in 1951. Churchill did not then say ‘I want you to be Chancellor.’ Instead he showed him a list with his name against the office, and when Rab expressed pleased surprise said, ‘Anthony and I think it had better be you.’ And then, lest there should be any gilt still clinging to the gingerbread, he gave him about the lowest rank in the Cabinet (number five below two peers and the Foreign and Home Secretaries) that it has recently been possible to allot to a Chancellor, more seriously tried to give him an overlord in the shape of the portentous Sir John Anderson, and in fact gave him an ‘underlord’ in the shape of Sir Arthur Salter whom he described as ‘the best economist since Jesus Christ’, but who happily from Rab’s point of view proved totally ineffective as a minister.