The Profumo affair was a major scandal in British politics during the early 1960s. John Profumo, the 46-year-old Secretary of State for War in Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, had an extramarital affair with then 19-year-old model Christine Keeler beginning in 1961. Profumo denied the affair in a statement to the House of Commons in 1963; weeks later, a police investigation proved that he had lied. The scandal severely damaged the credibility of Macmillan's government, and Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister in October 1963, citing ill health. The fallout contributed to the Conservative government's defeat by the Labour Party in the 1964 general election.
When the Profumo affair was revealed, public interest was heightened by reports that Keeler may have been simultaneously involved with Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché, thereby creating a possible national security risk. Keeler knew both Profumo and Ivanov through her friendship with Stephen Ward, an osteopath and socialite who had taken her under his wing. The exposure of the affair generated rumours of other sex scandals and drew official attention to the activities of Ward, who was charged with a series of immorality offences. Perceiving himself as a scapegoat for the misdeeds of others, Ward took a fatal overdose during the final stages of his trial, which found him guilty of living off the immoral earnings of Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies.
An inquiry into the Profumo affair by a senior judge, Lord Denning, assisted by a senior civil servant, T. A. Critchley, concluded that there had been no breaches of security arising from the Ivanov connection. Denning's report was later described as superficial and unsatisfactory. Profumo subsequently worked as a volunteer at Toynbee Hall, an East London charitable trust. By 1975 he had been officially rehabilitated, although he did not return to public life. He died, honoured and respected, in 2006. By contrast, Keeler found it difficult to escape the negative image attached to her by press, law, and parliament throughout the scandal. In various, sometimes contradictory, accounts, she challenged Denning's conclusions relating to security issues. Ward's conviction has been described by analysts as an act of establishment revenge, rather than serving justice. In the 2010s the Criminal Cases Review Commission reviewed his case but decided against referring it to the Court of Appeal. Dramatisations of the Profumo affair have been shown on stage and screen.
Background
Government and press
In the early 1960s, the British news media were dominated by several high-profile spying stories: the breaking of the Portland spy ring in 1961, the capture and sentencing of George Blake in the same year and, in 1962, the case of John Vassall, a homosexual Admiralty clerk who had been blackmailed into spying by the Soviet Union. Vassall was subsequently sentenced to eighteen years in prison. After suggestions in the press that Vassall had been shielded by his political masters, the responsible minister, Thomas Galbraith, resigned from the government pending inquiries. Galbraith was later exonerated by the Vassall Tribunal, after which judge Lord Radcliffe sent two newspaper journalists to prison for refusing to reveal their sources for sensational and uncorroborated stories about Vassall's private life. The imprisonment severely damaged relations between the press and the Conservative government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan; columnist Paul Johnson of the New Statesman warned, "any Tory minister or MP ... who gets involved in a scandal during the next year or so must expect—I regret to say—the full treatment".
John Profumo
John Profumo was born in 1915 and was of Italian descent. He first entered Parliament in 1940 as the Conservative member for Kettering while serving with the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, and combined his political and military duties through the Second World War. Profumo lost his seat in the 1945 general election but was elected again in 1950 for Stratford-on-Avon. From 1951 he held junior ministerial office in successive Conservative administrations.
In 1960, Macmillan promoted Profumo to Secretary of State for War, a senior post outside the Cabinet. After his marriage in 1954 to Valerie Hobson, one of Britain's leading film actresses, Profumo may have conducted casual affairs, using late-night parliamentary sittings as his cover. His tenure as war minister coincided with a period of transition in the armed forces, involving the end of conscription and the development of a wholly professional army. Profumo's performance was watched with a critical eye by his opposition counterpart George Wigg, a former regular soldier.
Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies, and Lord Astor
Christine Keeler, born in Uxbridge in 1942, left school at age 15 with no qualifications and took a series of short-lived jobs in shops, offices and cafés. She aspired to be a model, and at age 16 had a photograph published in Tit-Bits magazine. In August 1959, Keeler found work as a topless showgirl at Murray's Cabaret Club in Beak Street, Soho. This long-established club attracted a distinguished clientèle of whom Keeler wrote that they "could look but could not touch".
Shortly after starting at Murray's, Keeler was introduced to a client, the society osteopath Stephen Ward. Captivated by Ward's charm, she agreed to move into his flat, in a relationship she has described as "like brother and sister"—affectionate but not sexual. Keeler left Ward after a few months to become the mistress of the property dealer Peter Rachman, and later shared lodgings with Mandy Rice-Davies, a fellow Murray's dancer two and a half years her junior. The two girls left Murray's and attempted without success to pursue careers as freelance models. Keeler also lived for short periods with various boyfriends, but regularly returned to Ward, who had acquired a house in Wimpole Mews, Marylebone. There she met many of Ward's friends, among them Lord Astor, a long-time patient who was also a political ally of Profumo. She often spent weekends at a riverside cottage that Ward rented on Astor's country estate, Cliveden, in Buckinghamshire.
Stephen Ward and Yevgeny Ivanov
Stephen Ward, born in Hertfordshire in 1912, qualified as an osteopath in the United States. After the Second World War he began practising in Cavendish Square, London, where he rapidly established a good reputation and attracted many distinguished patients. These connections, together with his personal charm, brought him considerable social success. In his spare time, Ward attended art classes at the Slade school, and developed a profitable sideline in portrait sketches. In 1960 he was commissioned by The Illustrated London News to provide a series of portraits of national and international figures. These included members of the Royal Family, among them Prince Philip and Princess Margaret.
Ward hoped to visit the Soviet Union to draw portraits of Russian leaders. To help him, one of his patients, the Daily Telegraph editor Sir Colin Coote, arranged an introduction to Captain Yevgeny Ivanov (anglicised as "Eugene"), listed as a naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy. British Intelligence (MI5) knew from the double agent Oleg Penkovsky that Ivanov was an intelligence officer in the Soviet GRU. Ward and Ivanov became firm friends. Ivanov frequently visited Ward at Wimpole Mews, where he met Keeler and Rice-Davies, and sometimes joined Ward's weekend parties at Cliveden.
MI5 considered Ivanov a potential defector and sought Ward's help to this end, providing him with a case officer known as "Woods". Ward was later used by the Foreign Office as a backchannel, through Ivanov, to the Soviet Union, and was involved in unofficial diplomacy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Ward's closeness to Ivanov raised concerns about his loyalty; according to Lord Denning's September 1963 report, Ivanov often asked Ward questions about British foreign policy, and Ward did his best to provide answers.
Origins
Cliveden, July 1961
During the weekend of 8–9 July 1961, Keeler was among several guests of Ward at the Spring Cottage at Cliveden. That same weekend, at the main house, Profumo and his wife Valerie were among the large gathering from the worlds of politics and the arts which Astor was hosting in honour of Pakistani President Ayub Khan. On the Saturday evening, Ward's and Astor's parties mingled at the Cliveden swimming pool, which Ward and his guests had permission to use. Keeler, who had been swimming naked, was introduced to Profumo while trying to cover herself with a skimpy towel. She was, Profumo informed his son many years later, "a very pretty girl and very sweet". Keeler did not initially know who Profumo was, but was impressed that he was the husband of a famous film star and was prepared to have "a bit of fun" with him.
The next afternoon the two parties reconvened at the pool and were joined by Ivanov, who had arrived that morning. There followed what Lord Denning described as "a light-hearted and frolicsome bathing party, where everyone was in bathing costumes and nothing indecent took place at all". Profumo was greatly attracted to Keeler, and promised to be in touch with her. Ward asked Ivanov to accompany Keeler back to London where, according to Keeler, they had sex. Some commentators doubt this—Keeler was generally outspoken about her sexual relationships yet said nothing openly about sex with Ivanov until she informed a newspaper eighteen months later.
On 12 July 1961, Ward reported on the weekend's events to MI5. He told Woods that Ivanov and Profumo had met and that the latter had shown considerable interest in Keeler. Ward also stated that he had been asked by Ivanov for information about the future arming of West Germany with nuclear weapons. This request for military information did not greatly disturb MI5, who expected a GRU officer to ask such questions. Profumo's interest in Keeler was an unwelcome complication in MI5's plans to use her in a honey trap operation against Ivanov, to help secure his defection. Woods therefore referred the issue to MI5's director-general, Sir Roger Hollis.
Affair
A few days after the Cliveden weekend, Profumo contacted Keeler. The affair that ensued was brief; some commentators have suggested that it ended after a few weeks, while others believe that it continued, with decreasing fervour, until December 1961. The relationship was characterised by Keeler as an unromantic relationship without expectations, a "screw of convenience", although she also states that Profumo hoped for a longer-term commitment and that he offered to set her up in a flat. More than twenty years later, Profumo described Keeler in conversation with his son as someone who "seem[ed] to like sexual intercourse", but who was "completely uneducated", with no conversation beyond make-up, hair and gramophone records.
"Darling, ... Alas something's blown up tomorrow night and I can't therefore make it ... I leave the next day for various trips and then a holiday so won't be able to see you again until some time in September. Blast it. Please take great care of yourself and don't run away. Love J"
— From Profumo's "Darling" letter to Keeler, 9 August 1961
The couple usually met at Wimpole Mews, when Ward was absent, although once, when Hobson was away, Profumo took Keeler to his home at Chester Terrace in Regent's Park. On one occasion he borrowed a Bentley from his ministerial colleague John Hare and took Keeler for a drive around London, and another time the couple had a drink with Viscount Ward, the former Secretary of State for Air. During their time together, Profumo gave Keeler a few small presents, and once, a sum of £20 as a gift for her mother. Keeler maintains that although Ward asked her to obtain information from Profumo about the deployment of nuclear weapons, she did not do so. Profumo was equally adamant that no such discussions took place.
On 9 August, Profumo was interviewed informally by Sir Norman Brook, the Cabinet Secretary, who had been advised by Hollis of Profumo's involvement with Ward's group. Brook warned the minister of the dangers of being entangled with Ward since MI5 were at this stage unsure of his dependability. It is possible that Brook asked Profumo to help MI5 in its efforts to secure Ivanov's defection—a request which Profumo declined. Although Brook did not indicate knowledge of the relationship with Keeler, Profumo may have suspected that he knew. That same day, Profumo wrote Keeler a letter, beginning "Darling ...", cancelling an assignation they had made for the following day. Some commentators have assumed that this letter ended the association; Keeler insisted that the affair ended later, after her persistent refusals to stop living with Ward.
Developing scandal
Gordon and Edgecombe
In October 1961 Keeler accompanied Ward to Notting Hill, then a run-down district of London replete with West Indian music clubs and cannabis dealers. At the Rio Café they encountered Aloysius "Lucky" Gordon, a Jamaican jazz singer with a history of violence and petty crime. Gordon and Keeler embarked on an affair which, in her own accounts, was marked by equal measures of violence and tenderness on his part. Gordon became very possessive, jealous of Keeler's other social contacts. He began confronting her friends and often telephoned her at unsocial hours. In November Keeler left Wimpole Mews and moved to a flat in Dolphin Square, overlooking the Thames at Pimlico, where she entertained friends. When Gordon continued to harass Keeler he was arrested by the police and charged with assault. Keeler later agreed to drop the charge.