The Profumo Affair

By Vanessa Holburn

In the hot and steamy July of 1961, a hedonistic weekend at Lord Astor’s Buckinghamshire estate Cliveden set in motion a chain of events like no other. It was where John Profumo, Secretary of State for War, first decided he must bed the 19-year-old Christine Keeler, a model and showgirl. But that weekend Keeler headed home to London with diplomat, and known Russian spy, Yevgeny Ivanov instead.

Undeterred, Profumo quickly started dating Keeler, and begun to mix in her circle, which included society osteopath Stephen Ward and fellow model Mandy Rice-Davies. But alongside flirting with the decadent upper classes, Ward and Keeler also enjoyed the seedier side of city life, becoming entangled with violent petty criminals.

The heady mix of sex and espionage soon exploded. With Profumo exposed as a fraud, the government was left scrabbling to protect its reputation. Had its war minister been duped by the Soviets into careless pillow talk instigated by a Communist sympathiser? Both Ward and Keeler would become victims of the subsequent witch hunt. Ward would die by suicide and Keeler was branded a whore and liar.

The Profumo Affair was the scandal that rocked the 60s. But how and why did a brief romance between a married MP and a young showgirl go on to shatter so many lives and bring down the government of Harold ‘Supermac’ Macmillan?

Using the official Denning Report, recently released archival material and the accounts of those involved, Vanessa Holburn pieces together this surprisingly relatable story and asks; what really happened behind the headlines?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: May 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9781399062497

Vanessa Holburn

A journalist with over 20 years experience, Vanessa Holburn has worked and traveled extensively in Asia, with some of that time spent in India.Vanessa’s work has appeared in national consumer and trade press and digital outlets. The mainstay of this work has required her to take complicated subjects and make them accessible and interesting to read. Discovering details – and presenting them in an engaging way – is her passion.

Book preview

The

Profumo Affair

The

Profumo Affair

VANESSA HOLBURN

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by

PEN AND SWORD HISTORY

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire – Philadelphia

Copyright © Vanessa Holburn, 2024

ISBN 978 1 39906 247 3

ePub ISBN 978 1 39906 249 7

Mobi ISBN 978 1 39906 249 7

The right of Vanessa Holburn to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Contents

Introduction

Preface The Not-So-Swinging 60s

Part I: The Main Players

Chapter 1 John Profumo – A Man Forgiven

Chapter 2 Christine Keeler – A Fly in a Web of Deceit?

Chapter 3 Ivanov – The Love Triangle is Complete

Chapter 4 Stephen Ward – The Link Between Them All

Chapter 5 Mandy Rice-Davies – The Sidekick Who Found Success

Chapter 6 Bill Astor – Destined for Disappointment

Chapter 7 Harold Macmillan – The Man in Charge, or Not

Part II: The Drama Unfolds

Chapter 8 Profumo and Keeler Date

Chapter 9 Love Rivals Bring Keeler to the Fore

Chapter 10 Keeler, the Missing Model

Chapter 11 The Denial in the House

Chapter 12 The Confession and Resignation

Chapter 13 Ward is Arrested and Put on Trial

Part III: The Plot Thickens

Chapter 14 Resignation Fallout

Chapter 15 A Time of Spies

Chapter 16 The Role of the Press

Chapter 17 Security Concerns Are Raised

Part IV: The Curtain Falls

Chapter 18 The Denning Report – Profumo’s Fault but It’s Ward that’s Wicked

Chapter 19 Did Profumo Fell Supermac and the Conservatives?

Chapter 20 A Pardon for Ward

Chapter 21 A Pardon for Keeler

Chapter 22 More Lying than Spying?

Conclusion

Timeline of Events

Notes

Introduction

If people told the truth, this book simply wouldn’t exist. If those gathered at Cliveden on the weekend that started 8 July 1961 had been honest about what occurred there and thereafter, there would be no Profumo Affair and nothing to write about. Lives and governments could have been saved, friendships maintained and diplomatic relations preserved. But everybody lies, from the grandest in the land, to those from the humblest of backgrounds. Lords and ladies, politicians, the police, the media, colleagues, friends, enemies and lovers. They lie to each other, they lie about each other and they lie to themselves. They lie for money, for their job, to save face, to impress people, to protect people, sometimes they lie because they no longer know what the truth really is.

But a cast of liars also makes it difficult to tell a story. There is no one version to relay, no definitive answer for what really went on behind closed doors and when lights went out. And so, sixty years on from the trial that was to be the culmination of the Profumo Affair, we unravel the ‘he said/she said’ narrative to explore what really went on when John Profumo met Christine Keeler. This book is split into four sections to highlight the main areas of interest within the story: the people involved, what they did, what happened next and the long-term repercussions of their actions.

First, in Part I we meet the main players caught up in the scandal. This includes the ‘respectable’ politician, John Profumo, who lied about his infidelity and caused his aristocratic moniker to be forever associated with one of the most high-profile British scandals of the twentieth century. A rising star of the Tory Party, his affair ended his political career. Then there is Christine Keeler, a young girl treated as an object because of her beauty, misled and misguided by those she trusted time and time again. Keeler inadvertently became the poster girl for ‘fallen women’ when what she desired was to be truly seen. We meet too ‘Eugene’ Ivanov, a Russian spy cunningly using his role as a diplomat to satisfy his masters and yet failing to pull off his greatest long con when an explosive secret came to light, and he was sent scuttling home instead. Then there is Stephen Ward, in turns a saviour, social climber and Svengali. A promiscuous bon viveur whom the establishment used as a sacrificial lamb when the hangover from the party lifestyle they enjoyed proved too much to bear. We meet Mandy Rice-Davies, a savvy businesswoman trapped in a man’s world and wrapped in such a cute package that no one suspected her talent for self-preservation. And there’s Bill Astor, born with a silver spoon but given little motherly love, it seems. He latched onto Ward for the fun times but ran and hid when the hard times followed. Finally, we examine Harold Macmillan, a transformative Prime Minister and a stabilising statesman, brought low by his determination to believe in the honour of a fellow Tory above all else.

With our cast assembled, in Part II we turn to how our characters interact. We see the middle-aged lothario pursue a chaotic girl who was looking for a good time in the wrong places. It’s a fun love affair that suits them both, for a while. Then Profumo is warned off, because of the company they are keeping. The Russian spy has been burrowing deeper into high society, nobly helped by Ward, who hates the establishment but enjoys its gossipy gatherings. Our heroine stumbles on, dreaming of a career in modelling, but instead meeting more men, each one less suitable than the former. But the party keeps going; Keeler, Rice-Davies, Ward, Astor, Ivanov and Profumo all hope they can have their cake and eat it, consequences be damned. But with the lie discovered, there must be a confession and a resignation. What forced these events to happen?

Now the secret is out, heads must roll. Part III examines how Profumo and Keeler’s affair, his denial of it and the eventual outing of those involved impacted personal, professional and even public lives. This section also asks how the affair was discovered and why it became so significant. We see how the role played by an aggrieved press, the political opposition and the inducement of money compromised truth and justice. With the leadership at stake, the public needed a scapegoat. Profumo’s untameable desire for Keeler led to two criminal trials but he was never called as a witness in either of them. And the possibly toxic friendship between Ward and Keeler was shattered forever.

Finally, in Part IV we turn to the events that happened later in our timeline. We see what was called a government whitewash written by an outdated moral crusader with a ready-made agenda. Then we discuss the damage the Profumo Affair wreaked on Macmillan and the Conservative government, finally ending its thirteen years in power. The book also covers the unfinished business from the scandal’s fallout. Active campaigns exist calling for a pardon for both Ward, convicted of crimes under the Sexual Offences Act as he lay dying in a hospital bed, and for Keeler, who was very likely manipulated into giving one version, that suited many people, of being assaulted by her stalker. Here we also look at how the lies that were told cost everyone dearly.

The conclusion asks why a short-lived romance had such an impact, and if the same thing could happen today. It also examines what could have been done better to save a suicide, and to protect the reputations and livelihoods it ruined? The conclusion explains why the story isn’t over.

The sequence of events to the Profumo Affair is complex. A timeline at the back of the book will help you understand how the story unfolds, although the those involved were often unaware of what was going on around them. This is drawn from the investigative work of Keeler’s son Seymour Platt, and from files held at the National Archives in Kew.

Preface

The Not-So-Swinging 60s

Timing, as they say, is everything. And an understanding of the backdrop to the Profumo scandal is essential to see how and why a short-lived relationship between a minister and a model led to a disgraced politician and aristocrat, the fall of a government and a death by suicide.

While the 1960s are often thought of as a new, more modern decade, the lived experience of women had barely changed since that of their mothers. The pill, when it became available in 1961, was reserved for married women only, and it was uncommon to see a young woman out at night alone. Husbands still endorsed their wives’ signatures, including any that would allow them to take out a loan, and signed medical consent on behalf of their spouses.

When the Sexual Offences Act was created in 1956, and it sailed through both Houses, those involved in its making were exclusively male, since women had only been allowed access to the Lords in 1958. Stephen Ward was accused under Section 23 of the Act for the ‘procuration of a girl under twenty-one’. The Act criminalised anyone who introduced a female aged under 21 but over 16 to a male, if the two later had consensual sex.

In 1960, publishers Penguin Books were tried under the Obscene Publications Act for releasing D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. While Penguin won its defence, in his book An English Affair, Richard Davenport-Hines says that the time of the Profumo Affair, women were still sexually oppressed, crushed under the constraints society put on them via their home lives and responsibilities, assumptions about their sexuality and a sexist legal system. Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies rebelled against the gender stereotypes and were castigated because of that.¹ Lady Chatterley’s Lover went on to sell two million copies in the eight months after Penguin was found not guilty.

Things were finally but slowly changing, with the help of influential people such as journalist, campaigner and agony aunt Marjorie Proops, who tackled issues such as abortion, addiction and illegitimate babies in her columns. This was not enough though to prevent Keeler being described using language such as gold-digger, common tart and whore. Misogynistic attitudes went unchecked at the time of the Profumo scandal and the Ward trial.

London was certainly changing physically. When Macmillan’s government lifted building restrictions in 1954, the relaxed planning permissions and ready loans meant that twenty-four million square feet of new office space was built in central London in the following decade.² Davenport-Hines says the buoyant property scene was supported by a bull market from 1958 until the Flash Crash in May 1962. While in 1958, fifty property companies were listed on the London Stock Exchange, in just two years there were about 200, many of them related to the explosion of property development.³

Several high-profile property dealers were caught up in the Profumo scandal. Keeler and Rice-Davies were each the kept mistress of Polish Jew Peter Rachman at one time. Rachman’s name later became synonymous with the intimidation and exploitation of tenants. Keeler and Rice-Davies also had relationships with Charles Clore, a British financier, retail and property magnate, while Keeler may also have slept with Walter Flack, Clore’s business partner. The men were known for their hard-nosed business practices, with Clore known as the person behind the first ever hostile takeover.

The summer of 1961 was a scorcher. London was abuzz with excitement for the Soviet trade and industrial exhibition that was to open in Earl’s Court. The guest of honour was Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who was the first man to journey into outer space. Russia was trending, and so was the interest in espionage, with Ian Fleming’s Dr No selling 437,000 copies in paperback. A film of the book was released the following year and it launched a new genre of secret agent films that flourished in the 1960s.

But international politics didn’t follow a script with a happy ending. In 1961, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev issued an ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of all armed forces from Berlin, including the Western armed forces in the West. The Berlin Crisis culminated in the city’s partition and the building of the Berlin Wall. In October 1961, the Soviet Union exploded a hydrogen bomb of about 58 megatons to international condemnation. The weapon was the single most physically powerful device ever deployed, the most powerful nuclear bomb tested and the largest man-made explosion in history. While it was not intended for use, it was intended as a very serious threat. It was in July 1961 that war minister Profumo was enjoying his weekend at Cliveden and began his pursuit of Keeler, clearly unaffected by all that was going on around him.

In September 1962, William John Vassall, an Admiralty clerk, was arrested for spying after being caught in a homosexual honey-trap. The latest revelation came on top of the defection of diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean and the discovery of the Portland Spy Ring. To quell criticism, the Prime Minister ordered the Radcliffe Tribunal report to investigate the civil service.

Later that year, the UK became involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis, a thirty-five-day confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union in October and November. It was the closest the world came to nuclear conflict during the Cold War period, with the UK the proposed launch pad for American missiles, thus making Britain an immediate target. Macmillan was in constant contact with Washington during the time. The threat of a nuclear attack caused a lot of anxiety to the British public.

By 1963, unemployment had reached a peak of 4 per cent, the highest it had ever been since the post-war year of 1947, and the shaky British economy saw disruptions and work stoppages. This period of economic uncertainty hit amid the coldest winter Europe had experienced in two centuries, with snow remaining in some parts of the UK until April.

The spy stories continued, when in January Kim Philby defected to Russian and was finally outed as a double agent. The government only admitted he was the ‘Third Man’ in the Burgess and Maclean group on 1 July via Parliamentary Privilege. Three weeks later, Ward’s trial began, while the second Bond film, From Russia with Love, opened in Leicester Square in October.

When the Profumo scandal broke, the public’s appetite for salacious gossip about the upper classes had already been whetted by the very public split of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll. The duke, Ian Campbell, had married Ethel ‘Margaret’ Whigham, a glittering society figure, in 1951. Within a few years, the marriage was falling apart, in part due to the abusive behaviour of the duke, who was also an addict. The duke filed for divorce on grounds of infidelity and as evidence produced polaroid pictures stolen from his wife’s locked cabinet. The photographs showed a naked duchess engaged in sex with other men. The duke also presented a list of as many as eighty-eight men with whom he claimed his wife had consorted. At the time, the divorce judge commented that the duchess had indulged in ‘disgusting sexual activities’.

The spy and sex scandals were eagerly covered by the newspaper industry, which was facing its first serious challenge from the proliferation of TV sets. It was the era of chequebook journalism, and the tabloids were still smarting from the imprisonment of two of their number by Macmillan’s government. The establishment was caught with its pants down, the working-class voters wanted freedom from poverty, housing inequity and sexual repression. The government was seemingly inept at managing its own ministers.

The stage was set.

Part I

The Main Players

Chapter 1

John Profumo – A Man Forgiven

On 12 December 1975, Mr John Profumo attended an investiture at Buckingham Palace. The former politician, who was accompanied by his wife to the event, received a CBE from the Queen for his work at Toynbee Hall, the East End settlement for the poor. It might have been an altogether unsurprising honour if it wasn’t for the fact that just twelve years earlier, in June 1963, Profumo had been forced to resign as Secretary of State for War, from the Privy Council and as the MP for Stratford-upon-Avon because of his extra-marital affair with the 19-year-old showgirl Christine Keeler. An affair Profumo had previously denied when he was asked about it in the House of Commons.

Receiving this award was quite the comeback for someone who had lied to the House, cheated on his wife, the actress Valerie Hobson, and also put himself at risk of being compromised by a Russian intelligence officer while holding the office of war minister. His involvement with Keeler, at a time when she was also thought to be dating Soviet naval attaché Captain Yevgeny (Eugene) Ivanov, and his initial refusal to admit it, was also blamed for contributing to the fall of Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government.

But of course, Profumo was no ordinary man. He was in fact the 5th Baron Profumo of Italy, with friends in high places. Not least the Queen herself, who it seems intervened on Profumo’s part when he was allowed to resign from his post rather than face the alternative.¹

It was not the only display of how he was forgiven and then lauded by both the aristocracy and the Conservative Party despite the scandal to which he gave his name. In 1995, Margaret Thatcher invited him to her 70th birthday dinner, where he sat next to the Queen. The former Conservative Prime Minister called Profumo ‘one of our national heroes’ and said it was time to forget the Keeler business, as ‘his has been a very good life’.²

In July 2000, Profumo was among the guests at St Paul’s Cathedral for the tribute to the Queen Mother on her 100th birthday.

Another former Prime Minister, this time John Major, attended a formal opening of a new building at the Toynbee Hall complex named after Profumo in November 2003. Major also presented Profumo with a book of tributes to mark his work there. After the event, Profumo was quoted as saying that Toynbee Hall had taught him ‘humility’. In what was his first press interview since the scandal, Profumo told Lord Deedes, a former school friend, for the Daily Telegraph, ‘If you define wealth in monetary terms there’s no hope for the future. It’s only when you realise what you have to give that you become a real person.’³

The following year, Profumo visited 11 Downing Street to accept the Beacon Prize for his charity work and he was also a guest at the Westminster Abbey memorial service for Sir Edward Heath on 8 November 2005. This was his last public appearance before his death in March 2006, at the age of 91. Paying tribute to Profumo, Prime Minister at the time Tony Blair described the ex-minister as a politician who had had a great career but made a serious mistake, after which he had undergone a ‘journey of redemption’, giving support and help to many others.⁴

Undeniably, Profumo was a valuable asset to Toynbee, described as a ‘master fundraiser with huge energy’. He raised thousands of pounds while volunteering for the social reform charity, heightened its profile, becoming its president from 1982 to 1985. Having been introduced to the charity by the Marchioness of Reading, Profumo helped at Toynbee until the week before his death at London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital following a stroke two days earlier, his loyal and loving family at his bedside.⁵

The success at Toynbee was no doubt due in some part to his background and his access to the rich and influential. Even Profumo’s early political career was founded on having the right connections. David Margesson, a government Chief Whip, sponsored Profumo when he started out; Margesson was also a guest of John’s parents at their home in Warwickshire.⁶ In fact, until 1963, Profumo had led a charmed life, as John Profumo’s son David details in his book Bringing the House Down, in which the younger Profumo describes his father’s early years as pleasure-seeking and full of advantage, with an indulgent upbringing.

Even immediately after the scandal of Profumo’s admission that he had lied about his affair and his resulting resignation, Profumo and his family were afforded the privacy and sanctuary the other players in the drama could only dream about. David Profumo tells how, to avoid the press, the family first stayed at Cottage Farm, then in Warwickshire at Ivy Lodge, owned by Peggy Willis, and then at Randolph Churchill’s house in Suffolk. Back at the family home in Chester Terrace, loyal staff remained tight-lipped too.⁷ When Mr and Mrs Profumo did return to the London address, it was with a police escort.⁸ The family were safe and protected despite what David Profumo refers to as a desolate time for