[1] After leaving university he travelled to South Australia, where his father was Governor, as well as other locations in France, the Far East, India and America.

The Jebbs, apart from being a well-off family, also had a strong social conscience and commitment to public service; her mother, Eglantyne Louisa Jebb, had founded the Home Arts and Industries Association, to promote Arts and Crafts among young people in rural areas, her sister Louisa would help found the Women's Land Army in World War I, and Dorothy and her sister Eglantyne Jebb co-founded the international charity and movement Save the Children.

The Buxtons lived a frugal lifestyle - on their walking tours in the south of England, they were sometimes mistaken for tramps - and moved to Kennington, a working class area of London.

[2]: 74–75 During the First World War, he was one of the minority arguing for a negotiated peace and was a founder member of the Union of Democratic Control.

As secretary to the Labour Party's delegation to the Soviet Union in 1920, he was very impressed by what he saw, and wrote a book about it, In A Russian Village (1922).

[citation needed] Buxton was always much more effective behind the scenes, acting as policy advisor on foreign and colonial issues to the Labour Party.

[citation needed] Charles retired from politics in 1939 and lived in his daughter's house in Peaslake, Surrey, where he died and was buried in 1942.