Richard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden (9 December 1902 – 8 March 1982), generally known as R. A. Butler and familiarly known from his initials as Rab, was a British Conservative Party politician.
From July 1941 to May 1945 Butler served as President of the Board of Education, his first Cabinet level post, although he was not a member of the small War Cabinet. His Education Act 1944 for England and Wales, widely known as "the Butler Act", helped reshape postwar society. It responded to wartime demands for a greater role for Christianity in state schools while at the same time resolving the decades-old controversy over state support for the cash-strapped church schools, an issue which had been unpopular with nonconformists who by the 1940s made up a powerful voice in the NUT. The Act absorbed most Anglican schools into the state system, while others, including Roman Catholic schools, received financial aid whilst remaining largely autonomous. Butler's role was to secure passage by negotiations with interested parties from Churchill, who was initially reluctant to bring in a major bill, to the churches, from educators to MPs.Kevin Jeffereys, "RA Butler, The board of education and the 1944 Education Act." History 69#227 (1984): 415–431. Butler helped to achieve a consensus among vested interests and opinion formers. Much of the framework remained intact until the 1988 Education Act.Barber 1994, p.ix The Butler Act was the first of the enactments which brought in the postwar Welfare StateMachin 1998, pp.134–5 and the only one for which the Conservatives could claim credit.Ball 2004, pp.277–8 The Act also resolved confusion over two other issues, by creating a clear divide between primary and secondary schools at age 11 and by raising the school leaving age to 15, with provision to raise it further to 16 (not implemented until 1971). In accordance with education doctrine of the time the Act left the door open for, but did not specifically prescribe, selection of children by aptitude at age 11. The recommendation of the Fleming Committee to provide state scholarship places at fee-paying public schools was not implemented.
During these years Butler nursed the unrequited ambition of being appointed Viceroy of India. He served as Minister of Labour in the short-lived Churchill caretaker ministry (May–July 1945), then narrowly held his seat at Saffron Walden on a split opposition vote in the Labour landslide of July 1945. In opposition he was chairman of the Conservative Research Department and played an important role in rebuilding the Conservative Party, including issuing a number of Charters (one of which was the Industrial Charter) outlining party policy and largely accepting many of the reforms of the Labour Government, thus helping to establish the postwar cross-party "consensus".
Planning for postwar Sir Douglas Hacking, chairman of the Conservative Research Department, had approached Butler to work for him in 1940. In May 1941 the General Director of the Conservative Party appointed him to the Conservative Party Post War Problems Central Committee (PWPC), a body responsible for drafting party policy proposals.Jago 2015, p187 Butler became Chairman of the PWPC on 24 July 1941; he was also the chair of the War Cabinet Committee for the Control of Official Histories.Matthew 2004, p201Howard 1987, p. 141. The PWPC had subcommittees to deal with demobilization, agriculture, industry and finance, education and social services, constitutional and administrative affairs, and national security.Addison 1994, p. 182.
Butler would later resign from the PWPC in July 1943 (he was replaced by David Maxwell-Fyfe) to concentrate on his education bill, taking up the post again in August 1944 after the bill had passed into law. He had little policy-making influence on Churchill or his cronies in the runup to the 1945 general election. Butler would later (in March 1949, after a great many postwar policy papers had been published) write that in the war years the PWPC had issued papers to keep up "the illusion that the Conservative Party was alive".Butler 1971, p150
Education Minister Background Education reforms before 1941 England and Wales had a network of voluntary schools, most of them National Schools run by the Church of England, predating the state elementary schools set up under the Elementary Education Act 1870. The question of integrating church schools into the state system had bedeviled Balfour's Education Act 1902. H. A. L. Fisher had brought in another major Education Act 1918 but had not succeeded in integrating the church schools.Howard 1987, p. 114.
The Education Act 1918 promised compulsory part-time education from 14 to 18, but this was never implemented because of the Geddes Axe (spending cuts) of 1921.Jago, pp152-3Barber 1994, p.2 The Hadow Report of 1926, which recommended that the 11–14 age group should be hived off into separate senior elementary schools, was implemented very slowly because of the economic situation in the 1930s and had not been fully implemented at the start of World War Two. The Labour Party had promised Secondary Education For All in R. H. Tawney's 1922 work but did not have a majority in Parliament during their 1929-31 government to take on the vested interests of the churches. The Education Act 1936 was stymied by the churches, who blocked any further state control of the church schools, and by the Conservative Party agricultural lobby which ensured that the raising of the school leaving age to 15 was full of exceptions to allow teenagers to work on the land. The higher school leaving age was due to take effect by 1939 but the event was not implemented. The Spens Report, which was published in 1938 after five years of deliberation, and which called for the expansion of secondary education, was also not fully implemented.
Education in 1941 Just under half of children attended an all-through elementary school from 5 to 14 (the school leaving age since the Education Act 1918). Most of the rest transferred at 11 to one of the senior elementary school set up under the Hadow Report of 1926. 80% of children left school at 14. Other children attended grammar school (fee-paying, with some scholarships), or fee-paying prep school to 13 then fee-paying public school. The number of grammar school pupils had increased from 337,000 in 1921 to 470,000 in 1938, but the number of entrants had only increased from 90,000 to 98,000 in that time – most of the increase in numbers was caused by children staying on for longer.Barber 1994, p.1
More than half the schools in the country were church schools, many of them small schools, and many of them in rural areas.Addison 1994, p. 173. However, Church of England schools now educated 20% of children, down from 40% in 1902. Many church schools were in a poor state of repair.Howard 1987, p. 112. An average of 70 Church schools were closing each year. Of the 10,553 voluntary schools, 9,683 were over forty years old; of the 731 schools on the "Black List" (i.e. in an unacceptably poor state of repair) 543 were voluntary schools.
The Nonconformists (also known as "Free Churches") had few schools of their own – Methodists had chosen to invest in teacher training at colleges such as Westminster College. They had objected to the subsidizing of Anglican and especially Roman Catholic schools ("Rome on the Rates") in the 1902 Act.Barber 1994, p.41 Many non-Anglicans resented the "Single School Districts", mainly in rural areas, where the Church of England school was the only school, and to which parents had no option but to send their children. In the past the close relationship between the vicar and the local squire, whose family might well have paid for the school to be built, had often angered those lower down the social order who were less likely to be Anglicans.Jago, p164Butler 1971, p98 Butler later quoted with approval Élie Halévy's comments that English education consisted of "State Schools favoured by the Free Churches and free schools favoured by the State Church" and that rural schools were "built with the squire's money and taught the parson's catechism".Butler 1971, p97-8 Nonconformists tended to want church schools, especially in Single School Areas, to be nationalized and Cowper-Temple teaching (non-denominational religious teaching, required in state schools under the 1870 Forster Act) applied everywhere. However, they were committed to educational reform.
An "Agreed Syllabus" for Religious Education had been drawn up in Cambridgeshire in 1924 by a committee of teachers, Anglicans and nonconformists. By 1942 this was being used by over 100 LEAs. During the planning of the Butler Act Churchill referred to it the "County Council Creed" or even "Zoroastrianism", and once asked Butler if he intended to start a new state religion.Butler 1971, p99 Archbishop Temple derided the Agreed Syllabus as "Stoical Ethicism".Butler 1971, pp99, 103
By the 1940s, the NUT wanted to keep the Cowper-Temple Clause in state schools, and a guarantee that teachers not be appointed on the basis of their religious belief, to prevent only teachers of a given religious denomination being hired in church schools.Barber 1994, pp.42–3 Like the Nonconformists, the TUC and NUT simply wanted Church of England schools brought under state control. The Association of Education Committees under Sir Percival Sharp also wanted Local Education Authorities to take control of church schools, although they were willing to allow teaching positions to be "reserved" for denominational teachers.
Roman Catholic schools educated 8% of children. The Catholic Church was actually in the worst financial state, and could not afford to bring schools up to standard. They also refused to abandon all-through schools (educating children from the age of 4 to 14) or to accept Hadow reorganization (i.e. hiving off the 11–14 age group into separate senior elementary schools), partly due to costs but also out of concern that the Catholic Church would therefore effectively lose control of children over the age of 11.Barber 1994, p.39, p.42 The Catholic leader Cardinal Arthur Hinsley rejected the Agreed Syllabus altogether, thinking it "disembodied Christianity".
Religious education: the Five Points Two million schoolchildren were evacuated from London and other cities in 1939–40, making people more aware of urban poverty and other social problems.Barber 1994, p.3 William Temple, then Archbishop of York, was committed to building a "New Jerusalem", a new social order based on Christianity, and saw education reform as part of this. The Times had called for an increase in religious education (17 February 1940).Barber 1994, pp.39–41
In June 1940 Cardinal Arthur Hinsley, leader of the English Catholic Church, had led a deputation to Herwald Ramsbotham, President of the Board of Education, to demand financial support for Catholic schools. Ramsbotham had acknowledged that in principle the Catholic schools needed help but had made no firm commitment, and had stressed that greater state control over their schools, which the Catholic hierarchy did not want, would be the quid pro quo.Barber 1994, p.39