Arthi .onald Butt
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you can learn quite a lot about a man during threequarters of an hour's desultory chat in his office, still more if you meet him "out of school -; but if you are fortunate enough to have an opportunity of sizing him up in both atmospheres then you really do stand a good chance of getting to know him.
Not that in the case of Ronald Butt it was a case of sizing up he is the kind of personality I, at any rate, take to intuitively—robust in social outlook, mentally resilient, always prepared to "have a bash" at something new.
First of all, let's take a look at his career. Where has he got to? He's managing director of Morris Transport. Ltd., a company operating articulated vehicles, with 30 semi-trailers, and geared to carry bulk loads, contractors' plant and machinery. Besides this, he is a director of two companies associated with the transport industry. That's where he's got to. How did he get there?
The route, it must be said at once, is an improbable one. Until 1926 Ronald Butt was a railway clerk. But 1926, as many people will recall, was a bad time for railwaymen of whatever grade—it was the year of the General Strike, when the country came to a virtual standstill: no railways. no buses, no coal and no optimism. History does not record who really won the battle, the unions or the bosses; but from the perspective of 35 years one may conclude. I think. that the nation lost.
However that may be, Ronald Butt saw no future for himself on the railways, so he got out and joined Dunlop. thus taking a step closer to road transport than he was during his railway employment; for now he was to be concerned with rail and road_ There he stayed until 1931, learning, looking around and gradually becoming, you might think, the Complete Transport Man. It did not turn out quite like that, however. For the Butt story is not one of patient study in one particular field with the happy denouement of plodding merit finally rewarded. It's much more interesting.
In 1931 he made a dean break from transport. In that year he entered the sphere of insurance. And it was not long before he was promoted to the position of inspector, covering an area extending from north Wales to the Midlands. Now, Arthur Butt is nothing if not a humanist. He likes people more than machines and machinery (I am not quoting him: this is merely my inference from other things we spoke about during my Birmingham visit) and, therefore, those pleasant "days motoring along the comparatively traffic-free pre-war roads of Wales and little congested ways of the rural Midlands (Birmingham, of course, was just about as complicated for motorists then as it is nowadays!) and meeting all kinds of people must have been a continual delight to him. He must have enjoyed his work, for promotion came fast. When he took over the job of district manager, he was probably the youngest man his company had ever employed in such a responsible position.
Even this did not exhaust his ingenuity and enterprise. He was able to interest himself in the building industry while attending to his insurance business, and became something of a small estate developer. (He tells a sad story of land he acquired before the war compulsorily purchased by the authorities after the war for precisely the same sum he had paid for it!) When war broke out he was still district manager and in a reserved occupation. Staff departed for the Services and could not easily be replaced. So he stayed on until the inevitable personnel crises somewhat diminished. Then be joined the R.A.F. as a volunteer. Passing through the usual ranks he was finally commissioned as a Flying Officer and spent his days as an instructor—Link Trainer, lecturing and so on. And thus the wartime days dragged on their devastating way. Not much education for road transport!
No—our industry had to wait until 1946 for the advent of Arthur Ronald Butt. It happened that he was invited to find a buyer for a transport business in Sutton Coldfield. It was not in a particularly thriving condition. Indeed, I gather that it might without exaggeration be described as pretty rundown. Anyway his quest for a purchaser met with no success—so he took a major share in it himself.
Thus began that highly successful career in road transport which has earned him the respect and trust of the whole industry, to the extent that today he is a notable figure in the Road Haulage Association: sub-area chairman, twice chairman of the West Midland area, a member of the executive committee and national council and a national vicechairman. He is also chairman of the West Midland Maintenance Advisory Committee and a past national chairman of the Transport Managers Club.
In his business there's not a lot of fuss. He works hard, but believes in getting other people to take a load off his shoulders. In other words, he's a confirmed delegator: he likes to be assured that in the unfortunate and unforeseeable event of his being removed from this earthly scene the business he has built up will not fall into decay.
It is, I think, much in character that we spoke more about his activities outside the industry than what he has achieved in it. He has one hobby, fly-fishing, but little time to enjoy it. His leisure hours are much engaged with profoundly important social work—prison visiting. His special interest is the "Old Lag," the bard—and some people might be tempted to think irredeemable—cases of long term convicts, some of whom are under Preventive Detention. Nor are his visits confined to one prison only: he covers a wide field. He does not believe in the merits of capital punishment or the "cat." Work he sees as curative.
.My description of Arthur Butt as a humanist will now, I am sure, be understood. But let it not be thought that he is among our latter-day do-gooders. That kind of soft sentimentality and eagerness to interfere in other people's
affairs is not in his book. H.C.