Butler's role was to secure passage by negotiations with interested parties from Churchill, who was initially reluctant to bring in a major bill, to the churches, from educators to MPs.

In the past the close relationship between the vicar and the local squire, whose family might well have paid for the school to be built, had often angered those lower down the social order who were less likely to be Anglicans.

[28] On 13 February 1941 the Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury, York, and Wales issued the "Five Points", a statement on Christian education, from Lambeth Palace, after consultation with English and Welsh bishops and with the agreement of the (nonconformist) Free Churches.

[3][27] The Five Points were that (1) All children in all schools should receive a Christian education (2) Religious Education should be a recognized optional subject in training colleges (3) the statutory requirement that RE be the first or last lesson in the day be dropped (this had been a provision of the 1870 Forster Act to make it easier for parents who wished to withdraw their children to attend other religious instruction) (4) RE teaching was to be inspected by His Majesty's Inspectors (5) all schools were to start the day with an Act of Worship.

[30][31] The Green Book was supposedly confidential but was widely distributed among opinion formers, as Lester Smith put it, "in a blaze of secrecy", and was later used as the basis for talks with Local Education Authorities (LEAs) and teaching unions.

[30] Although many of Ramsbotham's proposals would later be incorporated into Butler's 1944 Act, Churchill at this stage did not favour major education reform and used the March speech as an excuse to remove him – he was sent to the House of Lords as a viscount.

[38] Some writers, such as Paul Addison, echo these claims and suggest that Churchill offered him an education, a backwater in wartime, or a diplomatic post to remove him from the more sensitive Foreign Office.

[43] Butler, who was privately educated and from a well-to-do family, initially had little knowledge of state elementary schools and relied on the guidance of his junior minister, James Chuter Ede.

At meetings on 23 July and later they broadly accepted the Green Book's parameters – government cash in return for state control of Anglican schools, but they wanted a single-clause bill to implement the Five Points.

[32] Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, Temple of York, the Catholic Cardinal Hinsley of Westminster, and Walter Armstrong, Moderator of the Free Church Federal Council, wrote to "The Times" on 21 December 1941 deploring "the failure of nations and peoples to carry out the laws of God".

[50] On 4 February 1942 Butler's junior minister James Chuter Ede, who had already grown to respect him, declined a proposal that he move to the Ministry of War Transport, although he would have obeyed a "direct order" from Churchill.

[61] With Churchill's leadership being questioned after recent war reverses,[62] Ivor Bulmer-Thomas (14 August 1942) commented that some Conservative MPs saw Butler rather than Anthony Eden as a potential successor.

[66] Butler realized that this would be too expensive to sell to his Conservative colleagues, and that such subsidy to the Catholic schools would infuriate the Free Churches, LEAs and the NUT, and that Churchill would explode if there was any hint of a row about "Rome on the Rates", a slogan which had been used to campaign against the 1902 Education Act.

[35] Now that the war was clearly moving in the Allies' favour, Butler found that his plans for an education bill gradually became attractive to senior ministers who wanted a cheaper alternative to implementing the Beveridge Report, whose publication was imminent.

Kingsley Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, told Butler (16 September 1942) that he preferred to spend taxpayers' money on education rather than on other kinds of social reform.

[73] In late November 1942 Brendan Bracken sounded Butler out as a potential Viceroy of India (in succession to Lord Linlithgow; Eden had been offered the job by Churchill and was seriously considering accepting it).

[76] Butler vainly lobbied John Anderson, Kingsley Wood and Ernest Bevin, senior ministers who managed the Home Front while Churchill concentrated on the war, to be allowed to present an education bill in 1943.

[80] Butler met Cardinal Hinsley again on 15 January 1943 and complained of the lack of progress in negotiations with the Catholic Church, which wanted to combine 100% state funding of infrastructure with religious autonomy.

[83] In March 1943, with Allied victory (sooner or later) looking increasingly likely, Churchill was now open to the idea of an education bill in 1944, as a social reform which would be cheaper than implementing the Beveridge Report.

[3] Educational doctrine of the time (reflected in Cyril Norwood's report of June 1943) favoured the Tripartite System, with children graded in the eleven plus exam, but the White Paper stated that the three types of secondary schooling could perfectly well be carried out on the same site or even in the same building.

[89] Butler resigned from the Conservative Party Post War Problems Central Committee in July 1943 (he was replaced by David Maxwell-Fyfe) to concentrate on the upcoming education bill.

[90] He presented his plans for a bill to the House of Commons on 29 July, likening the existing education system to a schoolboy's jacket, now worn out, too small, shiny, patched and in need of replacement.

[75] At the Second Reading in March 1944, Thelma Cazalet-Keir, part of Quintin Hogg's Tory Reform Committee, proposed two amendments, one to raise the school leaving age to 16 by 1951 and one demanding equal pay for women teachers.

[59][60] In his memoirs (The Art of the Possible 1971, p120) Butler later wrote of the Fleming Report that "the first-class carriage had been shunted into an immense siding" and described its recommendations as "sensationally disingenuous", as many of the public schools had themselves advocated such a proposal just before the war to get more funding.

[88] In August 1944 Butler took up the Conservative Party Post War Problems Central Committee (from which he had resigned in July 1943) again but had little influence on Churchill or his cronies over policy-making for the next general election.

[107] After the Conservatives were defeated in the 1945 general election, Eden's supporters saw Butler ("the Rabbit") as the main threat to their man's succession to the leadership (Dick Law to Paul Emrys-Evans 25 Aug 1945).

[110] In a speech on 30 March 1946 Butler, who had been impressed by Herbert Morrison's policy-making for Labour, claimed that the Tories had lost in 1945 due to lack of any similar positive alternative.

[4] In 1947 Macmillan gave only limited support to the Eden faction ("the Café Royal Group" which included Crookshank, Dick Law, Osbert Peake, Ralph Assheton, Maxwell-Fyfe, and a reluctant James Stuart) to push Churchill, who besides his foreign speeches had been spending a great deal of time abroad writing and painting, into retirement.

[115] Clarke recruited three wartime officers – Reginald Maudling, Iain Macleod and Enoch Powell, all of whom had political ambitions – to his secretariat to brief the Parliamentary Party.

[122] Butler and Macmillan were the main reformers, but similar views were also held by Lord Cranborne, who wanted to turn "small men" into "stakeholders" in society and Eden who revived the 1920s slogan of "a property-owning democracy".