Richard Butler won the gratitude and lasting respect of British farmers for his services to them as agriculture entered a new era with Britain’s accession to the European Economic Community in 1973. He will perhaps be remembered most vividly in farming circles for his highly successful double act with Henry (now Lord) Plumb when the latter was president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) with Butler first as vice-president and then deputy president between 1970 and 1979. In Plumb’s words, “I was the brawn and he was the brain.” Complicated briefs were mastered with impressive speed. In discussions with ministers and officials Butler assembled the facts and prepared the arguments with great care; Plumb then delivered them with panache. The NFU, always a formidable body, declared that farming interests had never been better represented.
British farmers prospered, as Plumb and Butler worked to ensure that they enjoyed the full benefits of the Common Agricultural Policy. During the 1970s average farm incomes doubled. But then the fat years ended abruptly; much leaner ones followed. Farmers received less generous treatment under the CAP as Margaret Thatcher battled to curb its profligacy which had led to huge surpluses, dramatised in the popular press as grain mountains and wine lakes.
Having succeeded Plumb as the NFU president in 1979, Butler had to reconcile farmers to these more testing times which included the introduction in 1984 of milk quotas on dairy producers who had long felt that the CAP favoured arable farmers at their expense. Assisted by his wry sense of humour, Butler retained their confidence. He had no difficulty in securing the 80 per cent support which he required in the annual NFU elections until he relinquished the post of president in 1986.
He recognised that with the end of high CAP price settlements, farmers needed to concentrate on improving the quality of their output and marketing it better. That was also the view of Peter Walker, who became Minister of Agriculture in Mrs Thatcher’s first government even though he disagreed with her about nearly everything. In his memoirs Walker laid stress on the close relationship he established with Butler. “I told Richard Butler that my objective was to have a good and stable British agriculture. He could come and see me whenever he liked. We would see that there was no prejudice against Britain in the way the EEC operated.” This helped to provide farmers with the reassurance they needed as Mrs Thatcher attacked the CAP in ever more strident terms.
For his part Walker was delighted to find himself in association with the eldest son of one of his heroes, Rab Butler, widely regarded as the best Conservative Prime Minister Britain never had. Rab’s long and distinguished career began in 1929, a few months after his son Richard’s birth. “We’ll make you premier — or yer biby,” the Tory voters of Saffron Walden in Essex shouted as they carried their new MP on their shoulders in triumph to the local Conservative club.
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The “biby”, however, developed no interest in a parliamentary career, leaving the family political mantle to fall on his younger brother Adam, an MP for 17 years, who held a number of junior ministerial posts under Mrs Thatcher. Richard Butler concentrated on reinforcing the family’s long connection with Essex. It was based on an estate at Halstead which his mother, Sydney, Rab Butler’s brilliant first wife and a Courtauld heiress (if she had lived, Rab would have become Prime Minister), had brought into the family. This provided him with some 1,500 acres of fine arable land to which he devoted himself after education at Eton and Pembroke College, Cambridge (extending the family connection with the university to a fifth successive generation) and National Service as a second lieutenant in the Royal Horse Guards.
Beyond his own successful farm, he helped to preserve the traditional rural way of life in his county as chairman of the East Essex Hunt for 40 years. He also served Essex as a deputy lieutenant over a similar period. He was knighted in 1981.
After retiring from the NFU leadership in 1986, he became a director of several companies with interests in food retail. To the dismay of sugar beet farmers, they included a manufacturer of artificial food sweeteners. He was also a director of the National Westminster Bank where his attention to detail and measured judgment were greatly valued, particularly during his years (1989-96) as chairman of one of the bank’s investment subsidiaries. He reinforced his City connections as Master of the Skinners’ and Farmers’ Companies.
In every aspect of his activities he was loyally supported by his wife, Susan. She was closely involved in his tireless charity work on behalf of arthritis sufferers. He was a trustee of the Arthritis Research Campaign from 1986 to 2005. For 14 years, 1995-2009, he chaired the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, a world leader in the search for a cure for arthritis. In one of his last acts of public service he oversaw the institute’s move into a new £5.2 million building in 2009.
He is survived by his wife, their twin sons and a daughter.
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Sir Richard Butler, president of the National Farmers’ Union, 1979-86, was born on January 12, 1929. He died on January 28, 2012, aged 83