Richard Clive Butler KT (1929 - 2012)

Born 12 Jan 1929 in Marylebone, London, England, United Kingdom

Ancestors

Husband of Susan Anne Maud (Walker) Butler — married 5 Jul 1952 in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England, United Kingdom

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Biography

Butler, Sir Richard Clive (1929–2012), farmer, was born on 12 January 1929 at the Welbeck Hospital, 27 Welbeck Street, Marylebone, London, the eldest in the family of three sons and one daughter of Richard Austen Butler (1902–1982), later Baron Butler of Saffron Walden, who was elected Conservative MP for Saffron Walden a few months after his son's birth and went on to hold many government posts, including that of home secretary. His mother was Sydney Elizabeth, née Courtauld (1902–1954), the only child of Samuel Courtauld, chairman of Courtaulds Ltd, the leading manufacturer of rayon. Growing up at Stanstead Hall, Halstead, in north Essex, his family's country home, Butler decided at an early age that he wanted to be a farmer, and after Eton College, and national service as a second lieutenant in the Royal Horse Guards, in 1949 he went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, to study agriculture. There was no tripos in agriculture at that time, but he took the examinations for the certificate of proficiency in agriculture, which qualified him for an ordinary BA degree, and he graduated in 1952. He then worked as a farm pupil in Norfolk. On 5 July 1952 he married Susan Anne Maud Walker (b. 1930), daughter of Patrick Bruce Walker, company director, of Lincoln: they had twin sons and one daughter.

In 1953 Butler took over the management of his mother's 350 acre farm in Greenstead Green, Halstead, and spent the rest of the 1950s working on the farm, adding to and consolidating the holdings into a farm of over 2000 acres. Mainly an arable farmer, growing wheat, peas, and sugar beet, he also had two dairy herds. He was elected to the national council of the National Farmers' Union (NFU) in 1962, and chaired the peas committee, and in 1971, after one year as vice-president, he was elected deputy president, serving alongside Henry Plumb, president from 1971 to 1979, and a passionate supporter of European integration. In 1973 Britain entered the European Economic Community (EEC), and Plumb and Butler fought hard, and successfully, to ensure that British farmers gained the fullest possible benefit from membership, and survived the transition from farm prices guaranteed by the British government to the arrangements of the common agricultural policy (CAP). According to Plumb, 'I was the brawn and he was the brain' (The Times, 15 March 2012): Plumb was a flamboyant public figure, but behind the scenes Butler was methodically drafting documents, weighing up arguments, and sitting on committees.

Butler succeeded Plumb as president of the NFU in 1979, at the same time as Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, appointing Peter Walker as minister of agriculture. The new prime minister fought to improve Britain's position in the EEC, against a background of increasing public anger at the huge surpluses being funded through the CAP. Less concerned with the plight of British farmers, she argued for a reduction in the British contribution to the EEC budget, even though this would mean a reduction in the subsidies paid through the CAP to farmers. Helped by his good relationship with Walker, who later wrote of their close co-operation, Butler tried to obtain a fair deal for British farmers. A major problem was the artificial exchange rate, ‘the green pound’, imposed by the EEC, which meant that British farmers were paid less than other European farmers for their produce, which in turn left them with less money for investment in new technology. Butler lobbied for the devaluation of the green pound, in order to raise the sterling value of EEC farm prices, but this would have meant higher prices for British consumers, and the prime minster was more concerned with reducing inflation. Butler was also struggling against unfair practices by other nations of the EEC, including France, which refused to allow imports of British lamb, in retaliation for British government subsidies for sheep farmers and the importing of lamb from New Zealand. But despite his efforts to protect the dairy farmers, in 1984, at a time when British farmers had been expanding milk production, the EEC brought in milk quotas for dairy farmers, as over-production of milk was costing half the total CAP budget: any milk sold over the quota would be subject to a superlevy.

Not all of Butler's time was consumed by problems with Europe. At home, he was largely responsible for toning down the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, introduced by the government in response to the growing concern of environmentalists and conservationists over the threat to the countryside posed by the expansion of farming and technological improvements. The act gave legal protection to sites of special scientific interest, but Butler succeeded in establishing the principle that farmers should be trusted to manage their land responsibly, and that the government would compensate them for forgoing income they would have earned by improving the land.

One of Butler's greatest successes concerned tenants' right of succession to their farms. Although the NFU had supported the passage of the act of 1976 giving the heirs of tenant farmers the right to inherit their holdings for two generations, it had become clear that this legislation was discouraging landowners from letting their farms. Butler, realizing that the protection of tenants had gone too far, and had had the result of making it hard for the younger generation to take up farming, worked in co-operation with the Country Landowners' Association to make proposals to the government for a new act. The Agricultural Holdings Act (1984) restricted the rights of succession to one generation, but in a codicil protected the rights of existing tenants gained under the act of 1976.

During the period of his presidency, Butler came to realize that the NFU had to reverse its policy of encouraging farmers to increase production, because this had been too successful, and farmers were now producing too much. A way needed to be found to reduce surpluses without bankrupting farmers and ruining the rural economy. He was responsible for, and took pride in, the publication in 1984 of The Way Forward, a new policy document from the NFU setting out the arguments for ending their support for the expansion of agricultural production, and the acceptance of the need for changes in the CAP in order to deal with the problem of surpluses.

Butler (who was knighted in 1981) stood down from the presidency of the NFU in 1986. In his later years he took on several directorships, including the National Westminster Bank (1986–96), where he was also chairman of County Natwest Investment Management, Ferruzzi Trading (later Agroceres & Co., 1986–98), and the NFU Mutual Insurance Society Ltd (1985–96). He served as master of the Skinners' Company in 1994–5, and of the Farmers' Company in 1997–8. He played an active part in local affairs, as chairman of the East Essex Hunt for forty years, and he devoted much time and energy to arthritis charities, as a trustee of the Arthritis Research Campaign from 1986 to 2005, and from 1995 to 2009 as chairman of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology Trust, overseeing its move to Charing Cross Hospital, where it became a world leader in the study of arthritis and rheumatism. He died on 28 January 2012 in Colchester General Hospital, from head injuries suffered falling off his horse, and was survived by his Susan and their three children: Antonia Marie (1954), Richard Michael (1956) & Christopher Patrick (1956).

Sources

• Butler Family tree - property of NW Smith.
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography