Rab Butler - Early Life

Early Life

Butler was born in Attock Serai, Attock in India (now in Punjab, Pakistan) to Sir Montagu Sherard Dawes Butler and his wife, Anne Gertrude (née Smith). His maternal uncles were Charles Aitchison Smith, Sir George Adam Smith and Sir James Dunlop Smith. His father later remarried and thus he gained a half-sister, Iris Mary Butler, who became Iris Portal upon her marriage. Portal's elder daughter is Jane Williams, Baroness Williams of Elvel, the mother of Justin Welby.

Butler's was a family of Cambridge dons and Indian Governors; as a child his right arm was injured in a riding accident, leaving his hand never again fully functional. His limp handshake and inevitable lack of military experience (and stooping donnish manner at a time when many politicians were former officers) were political handicaps in later life. He was educated at Marlborough College and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society in the summer term of his third year; in March 1924, as a newly-elected President, he entertained the Opposition Leader Stanley Baldwin at a debate.

While at Cambridge he read French (in which he obtained a First), German and, in his fourth year, History and International Relations, in which he obtained one of the highest Firsts in the University. He specialised in the study of Sir Robert Peel, a man whose actions had split the Conservative Party and who may have greatly influenced Butler's later political trajectory. Butler also took part in the ESU USA Tour, the debating tour of the United States run by the English-Speaking Union.

After a brief period as a Cambridge don, teaching nineteenth century French history, he was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Saffron Walden in the 1929 general election. Butler held this seat until his retirement in 1965.