Ronald Butt

Ronald Butt (died 12 December 2002 at the age of 82) was a journalist and moral conservative activist. He had been 'associated' with Family and Youth Concern 'since its inception in 1972 and became a Trustee of the Family Education Trust in 1992.' According to Valerie Riches

During the war he served in the Normandy campaign and in the Army Intelligence Corps. After demobilisation he read history at St Catherine's College, Oxford, and became a scholar journalist, who for nearly 35 years was a national political commentator, respected and noted for his deep thoughtfulness. He was political correspondent and later political editor of The Financial Times before he became an assistant editor of The Sunday Times and subsequently an associate editor of The Times. His first book The Power of Parliament was published in 1967. This was followed in 1989 by The History of Parliament: the Middle Ages. Both books were highly commended by critics, some of whom thought that they should be set reading for history courses in the universities. Ronald became much concerned with the moral issues of politics. He saw many of the policies which arose from the permissive society as attacks on the family, and therefore hostile to the good of society. As an historian he became deeply concerned that Britain was entering into what he described as 'the most dangerous period of its history' as our culture was being steadily destroyed, and he deplored the role that sections of the mass media played in this. Ronald was very much a family man. His loyal involvement in the work of the Family Education Trust was largely an outcome of his own happy family life, which we experienced when for a period we lived nearby in Highgate. He was devoted to his wife Margaret whom he married in 1956 and to their two sons and two daughters, by all of whom he is survived.