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End of an affair that destroyed a government

Scotsman.com News - Politics - End of an affair that destroyed a government

STEPHEN McGINTY

FORTY five years ago, the brief but cataclysmic fling that John Profumo enjoyed with Christine Keeler resulted in the collapse of a government, ushered out the age of patrician politicians and opened the door to the kind of tawdry political sex scandals that barely raise an eyebrow today.

The death of the 91-year-old Profumo, announced yesterday, also draws to a close a remarkable 32 years spent in private atonement, working among the poor of London's East End. As Sir Bill Deedes, a close personal friend of Profumo, said yesterday: "The fact is what he did, and continued to do until quite recently, was a very long stint of social work for the poor of east London. And if that isn't considered to be sufficient atonement for the mistake he made, then there is no such thing as forgiveness."

And Prime Minister Tony Blair last night described Profumo as "a politician with a glittering career who made a serious mistake, but then underwent a journey of redemption".

Profumo's fatal mistake was to bring sex out from behind the bedroom door and into the living room. As Philip Larkin famously wrote in his poem, Annus Mirabilis: "sexual intercourse began in 1963", the year the Profumo Affair broke and the minister resigned in disgrace. Lord Denning's official inquiry into the affair became a bestseller, as hundreds queued outside bookshops from midnight on the day of its publication, only to be disappointed by its lack of graphic detail.

Today the whole affair is remembered for the iconic image of Christine Keeler, naked astride a wooden chair.

Yet, at the height of the Cold War, the scandal was given extra frisson by the revelation that Profumo had been sharing Keeler with Eugene Ivanov, the naval attaché at the Soviet embassy, a fact which gave the story international interest and persuaded the FBI to compile its own report entitled Operation Bowtie.

Profumo was unique in political life because he twice helped bring down a Conservative government: the first was deliberate, the second was, of course, accidental. The son of Albert Profumo, a Baron in the Kingdom of Sardinia, John Profumo was born in 1915, educated at Harrow and Oxford and became the youngest MP at the time of his election in 1940. Shortly afterwards he voted against Neville Chamberlain, whose collapse led to the election of Winston Churchill and victory in the Second World War.

Handsome, well spoken and well connected, he married Valerie Hobson, a British actress popular in Ealing comedies such as Kind Hearts and Coronets, in 1954. After a number of sub-cabinet roles he was appointed secretary of state for war in 1960, charged with the task of boosting enlistment after the end of National Service.

The fatal object of his desire hailed from a more ordinary background. Christine Keeler was born in 1942 and left her home in the Thames Valley at the age of 16 to work as a "showgirl" at Murray's Cabaret Club in London. There she met Marilyn 'Mandy' Rice-Davies and together they joined the louche set surrounding Stephen Ward, an osteopath and socialite, who provided call girls for upper-class sex parties.

The girls started out entertaining clients at Ward's mews flat in west London, which was equipped with two-way mirrors for the titillation of voyeurs. Later the women were invited with Ward to the country estate of Lord Astor at Cliveden, where Profumo and Keeler first met. Their subsequent affair lasted only a few months and was conducted at Ward's flat, where on a number of occasions Profumo narrowly missed bumping into Ivanov.

The crisis enveloped the government in December 1962 when a jilted boyfriend of Rice-Davies discharged a gun outside Ward's house, which resulted in a police investigation into Ward's activities and a subsequent criminal trial. The newspapers began to report stories of orgies at upper-class homes, including stories of a senior politician who went naked but for a mask and acted as a 'slave' at society dinner parties.

Unlike today, when the news would be splashed on the front pages, the press were forced to be more circumspect. Before Profumo made his statement and the affair became public knowledge, one newspaper skirted the difficulty of reporting a story that was still in the realm of speculation by running a split front page with one side reporting on Keeler while the other ran an entirely unconnected story about Profumo. In this way, the paper made a connection between the two without making any accusation of impropriety.

The Week That Was, the satirical current affairs programme, even broadcast a re-vamped version of the old musical hall number She Was Poor, But She Was Honest with the lyrics:

"See him in the House of Commons/Making laws to put the blame/While the object of his passion/walks the streets to hide her shame."

As a result of the innuendo in March 1963, Profumo stood up in the House of Commons and made a personal statement, he admitted to knowing Christine Keeler but nothing more. When a letter between the pair later emerged he was forced to resign on 4 June, having admitted that he had misled the House. He resigned from office, from the House of Commons, and from the Privy Council, and the scandal sounded the death knell of the Conservative government.

Unlike today, when politicians can re-emerge after admitting all on a television chat show, Profumo vowed never to speak of his wrongdoing and set about atoning for his behaviour with charity. He started working in a soup kitchen, before going on to use his political skills as a fundraiser for Toynbee Hall, a charitable organisation based on the eastern fringe of the City of London. He had confessed all to his wife before making his public statement and she stood by him until her death in 1998.

Although he was shunned by former friends in the immediate wake of the scandal, he was partially accepted back into the establishment in 1975 when he was awarded a CBE, but he had no interest in returning to public life. Even when his personal crisis was turned into a cinema drama in the film Scandal in 1989, he refused to speak out.

Although, following the publication of Keeler's memoirs in which she claimed to have been pregnant with his child, he did write to the journalist Matthew Parris, declining an invitation to contribute to his book, Political Scandals, but writing: "Since 1963, there have been unceasing publications, both written and spoken, relating to what you refer to in your letter as 'the Keeler interlude'. The majority of these have increasingly contained deeply distressing inaccuracies, so I have resolved to refrain from any sort of personal comment."

Last night Luke Geoghegan, the chief executive of Toynbee Hall, paid tribute to the man who had worked so hard in atonement of his sins: "John Profumo was an inspiration to us all. His tireless commitment to the organisation's development, and particularly fundraising, continued to the end. He took an active interest in the work of all, and helped to create a very special form of friendship amongst all the people here. All who came into contact with him will have a very special memory of him."
'He would, wouldn't he?' - the court statement that made history

THE Profumo Affair, which led to political disgrace, a celebrated court case, a suicide and the downfall of a government, began in July 1961 when John Profumo, then 46, first saw Christine Keeler. She was swimming naked in a pool, at a cottage on Lord Astor's Cliveden estate - used by Dr Stephen Ward, a fashionable London osteopath and painter.

Keeler, who was 19, was a model at a time when the term tended to be a euphemism for "call girl". Profumo, who had become Harold Macmillan's secretary of state for war the previous year, and was married to the actress Valerie Hobson, embarked on a brief affair with Keeler. As escalating rumours, press speculation and questions in Parliament came to a head in 1963, it emerged that Keeler had also had sex with Commander Eugene Ivanov, a Russian intelligence officer and an assistant Soviet naval attaché in London.

On 22 March 1963 Profumo made a statement in the Commons, assuring that there was "no impropriety" in his friendship with Keeler. Ten weeks later, however, on 5 June, he resigned from office, admitting, "with deep remorse", that he had lied.

Three days later, Ward, notorious for his high-society sex parties held at his flat, was arrested and charged with living off the immoral earnings of both Keeler and her friend - and fellow prostitute - Mandy Rice-Davies, a charge since denied by Keeler. However, by the time he was found guilty, he was in a coma, having taken an overdose of sleeping pills, and he died on 3 August. The most famous line from the trial belonged not to Ward but to Rice-Davies, who had been accused of selling sexual favours to Lord Astor. Told that Astor had denied ever sleeping with her, she replied: "He would, wouldn't he?"

Keeler served nine months in Holloway Prison for unrelated perjury charges, having failed to appear as a witness in the trial of a man shot at her home. She later claimed that Ward had been spying for the Soviets, and her involvement with Ward, Ivanov and Profumo attracted attention from the FBI. However Lord Denning's report on the affair, published on 26 September, found that national security had not been endangered, but condemned the government for failing to deal promptly with the affair. The ailing Macmillan resigned shortly afterwards, to be replaced by Sir Alec Douglas-Home. The following year the Tories were ousted by Labour - though by a narrow margin.

JIM GILCHRIST

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Last updated: 11-Mar-06 01:40 GMT

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