Rab Butler Quotes

The term "planning" is a new word for coherent and positive policy. The conception of strong Government policy in economic matters is, I believe, the very centre of the Conservative tradition. We have never been a party of laissez-faire.

Tories and others set about the task of dealing with the social consequences of the Industrial Revolution by calling upon the power of Government to redress injustice...[The State] assumed the functions of protecting the common interest and safeguarding the interests of the weaker members of society.

We must recognise that the absolutely free working of such a system cannot now be accepted. We are living too closely knit a structure of society in which the very complication of our immense programme of social reform and industrial development necessitates strong powers being retained at the centre. It will be necessary to use the organising power and majesty of the State in a variety of ways. The State will have to be the grand arbiter between competing interests.

We must understand that no party in the country can with success base itself on or identify itself with one social element or class. To be successful we have still to reorganize from top to bottom the social structure on which our party rests. We agree that in the modern world great extremes of poverty and wealth shall be replaced by an infinite variety of plenty.

You can imagine how lonely and sad I felt in Parliament, and indeed in the whole political world, when I knew that Mr Chamberlain had gone. I do not think that the party will ever be the same again. I looked upon him as the last leader of the organisation in the State which I joined very late in its life but which has been responsible for much of England's greatness.

[The Anglo-Polish alliance] would have a bad psychological effect on Hitler and would wreck any negotiations.

If the Socialist Party is prepared to make friends with Russia, which is a dictatorship with which no Englishman can really agree, why can we not make friends with Italy and Germany? There are people saying Herr Hitler has broken his word. I tell you that the one bargain he has made with us, that the German Navy should be one third of the size of the British Navy, he has kept, and kept loyally.

What struck me at the League was the prestige in which our Government and our Prime Minister are held. What has struck hon. Members who have listened to this Debate is the fact that public opinion in the dictator countries has conceived a profound admiration for our Prime Minister and our country. Our country, therefore, is the country which is in a priceless position for securing the future of peace...It seems to me that we have two choices either to settle our differences with Germany by consultation, or to face the inevitability of a clash between the two systems of democracy and dictatorship. In considering this, I must emphatically give my opinion as one of the younger generation. War settles nothing, and I see no alternative to the policy upon which the Prime Minister has so courageously set himself—the construction of peace, with the aid which I have described. There is no other country which can achieve this, and I ask hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite sincerely to believe that in our efforts to understand, to consult with and, if possible, to get friendship with Germany, we do not abandon by one jot or tittle the democratic beliefs which are the very core of our whole being and system. In conclusion, I must gratify the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield by quoting Shakespeare. The right hon. Gentleman will remember the little poem "Under the Greenwood Tree"—"Here shall he see" "No enemy," "But winter and rough weather". We have the winter before us, and we have a great deal of political rough weather, but in that rough weather, do not let us forget the joint idea of peace which animates us all.

Many a time I have sat in the jungle in Central India watching a bait, in the form of a bullock or calf tied to a tree, awaiting the arrival of the lord of the forest, and put there as a trap to entice him to his doom. On this occasion, I have exactly the same feelings as those of the miserable animal whom I have so often looked upon in that position, and, if I compare myself to that bait, I may compare my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) to the tiger. I hope that hon. Members and the right hon. Gentleman himself will remember, however, that there is waiting for the tiger a pair of lynx eyes and a sure and safe rifle to ensure his ultimate fate.