The Minister, the call girl and the fall of a government

IT’S half a century since John Profumo, Secretary of State for War, lied in the House of Commons about having an affair with the call girl Christine Keeler, in what was to become known as Britain’s most notorious sex and security scandal.

The denial resulted in the exposure of a searing story of sex, suicide, intrigue and espionage. It demolished John Profumo’s comfortable world and ambitions to go to the top of British politics.

Smooth-talking and Oxford-educated, Profumo was a rising star of the Tory Party, tipped as a future Foreign Secretary and possibly a PM. He was close to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, a war hero and the dashing husband of film star Valerie Hobson.

But seven shots fired at a house in a quiet Marylebone mews by the jilted boyfriend of Christine Keeler led to the end of his political career and triggered the most notorious political sex scandal of modern times.

Macmillan’s Cabinet was shaken by Keeler’s revelations that she had sex with both Profumo and Commander Eugene Ivanov, a handsome Russian intelligence officer and the Soviet assistant naval attache in London. There were tales of orgies, including whipping parties at a house in Mayfair where, it was said, one of the over-excited guests died of a heart attack.

On March 22 1963, battered by parliamentary gossip, Profumo delivered a personal statement to MPs denying “any impropriety whatsoever” in his relationship with Keeler. His claim that a platonic friendship had ended in 1961 was accepted by the Cabinet.

But opposition MPs and newspapers remained sceptical.

In June, after a welter of rumour, accusation and denial that rocked the Government, Profumo, was forced to resign when osteopath and man-about-town Dr Stephen Ward was arrested and charged with living on immoral earnings.

It was Ward who, in 1961 had taken Keeler to Lord Astor’s country home at Cliveden, Berkshire, where Profumo first set eyes on her climbing nude from the swimming pool. She was 19 and he was 48 and married. Their brief affair might have ended without public knowledge, but for a bizarre set of circumstances that would lead to allegations of a “top people’s vice ring” potentially threatening national security.

Gossip circulated wildly, and the Macmillan Cabinet secretly feared Ward would exploit the publicity surrounding his trial to name other establishment figures involved in sexual scandal.

Police evidence at the trial revealed for the first time the seedy tale of prostitution, espionage and deceit. The Profumo affair shook the establishment to its roots during the final months of the Macmillan administration and led to an inquiry by Lord Denning, the Master of the Rolls. He found all the rumours to be untrue.

Before the year was out, Macmillan resigned and was replaced by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who lost the General Election, ending 13 years of Tory rule.

“Everyone was absolutely captivated by what happened,” says Richard Davenport-Hines, author of An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo. For many people it is their first memory of political scandal, says the writer, who believes Britain is more puritanical these days, “...but part of the interest in the Profumo story was through a guilty, vicarious satisfaction.”

“People like to read about other people’s sex lives as long as they are enjoying the sex but are caught and punished,” he says.

There are two schools of thought about the lasting impact of the scandal, says Lawrence Black, professor or modern British history at York University.

“Some people feel it democratised politics by removing the sheen of superiority and authority and proving that politicians were mortal, with frailties. It spread the idea that anyone could be a politician. Before that time a blind eye had often been turned to politicians’ improprieties, but the affair opened them up to public scrutiny as never before.

“The other, less positive, view is that the scandal led to the British Press becoming much more intrusive, with politics being reduced to gossip and sleaze. The affair came along at a time when ITV was starting and satire programmes made it their business to poke fun at politicians. Politics would never be the same again.”

Profumo served penance for parliamentary dishonour with more than 30 years of charity work among the poor in the East End of London. He died in 2006.