Ronald Butt

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Ronald Herbert Butt, CBE (17 February 1920 – 13 December 2002) was a British journalist best known for his weekly political column in The Times from 1968 to 1991 and for two books about Parliament.

Born in south London, he was the son of Herbert Butt and Elizabeth Clare Butt. He went to St Dunstan's College. Before World War II he held pacifist beliefs but chose to join the Army, serving in the Intelligence Corps and taking part in the Normandy campaign after D-Day. After the war he studied history at St Catherine's College, Oxford, where he gained a first. He considered postgraduate work but decided to become a journalist.

Butt began his journalism career at the Financial Times in 1951, starting as a commodities correspondent, then moving to political reporting and eventually becoming political editor. A former colleague, Sir Geoffrey Owen, said Butt added a new level of insight to the FT with his smart commentary. In 1967 he joined The Sunday Times as a political columnist, assistant editor and leader writer. In 1983 he moved to The Times as associate editor and leader writer.

He is best remembered for his long-running weekly column for The Times, where he wrote from a conservative viewpoint but criticized the poll tax and policies he felt harmed family life. He retired in 1991.

As a scholar, Butt spent 1964–65 as a resident research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he began his first book, The Power of Parliament (published 1967). The work argued that Parliament was not powerless in modern politics and that back-bench MPs could influence governments. It was widely discussed in Parliament.

His second book, A History of Parliament: The Middle Ages (1989), was the first narrative history of Parliament’s development in the Middle Ages, highlighting the political forces behind its growth. He was working on a second volume at the time of his death.

Butt also served on the Butler Committee on Mentally Abnormal Offenders (1972–75) and was a member of the Council of Westfield College, University of London (1971–1989). He supported Family and Youth Concern (later the Family Education Trust). He was made a CBE in 1987. He was married to Margaret Chaundy, with whom he had two sons and two daughters. Butt died on 13 December 2002 and was buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.