The 1960s sex scandal that rocked British politics

The Profumo affair led to a authorities minister’s resignation on 5 June 1963. In 1983, Christine Keeler talked to the BBC about her half in a narrative of intercourse, lies and Chilly Conflict paranoia.

“For 20 years, I feel I’ve simply been a newspaper clipping, I’ve by no means actually had my say,” Christine Keeler instructed the BBC’s Sue Lawley on Nationwide in 1983. She was recalling the infamous political scandal that had engulfed her life and made her a family title: the Profumo Affair.

The 21-year-old mannequin discovered herself thrust into the media highlight when, on 5 June 1963, John “Jack” Profumo resigned as UK Secretary of State for Conflict after admitting that he had lied to Parliament about having an affair along with her. The press alleged that in their dalliance two years earlier, Keeler was additionally seeing a Soviet naval attaché, Yevgeny Ivanov, who was believed to be a spy.

The story appeared to have every part: intercourse, showgirls and the British higher class; mendacity, a taking pictures and Chilly Conflict spying. Keeler was unprepared for the scandal she was caught up in, and whose fallout would play a job within the collapse of the UK authorities. “I used to be an uneducated woman, and once I was 19, politics to me was one thing completely past my scope,” she instructed the BBC in 1983. Because the affair’s particulars emerged, Keeler would discover herself pursued after which vilified by the tabloid press, their protection defining the general public’s notion of who she was. A photograph taken on the time of an unclothed Keeler posing on a chair, would change into one of many defining photographs of London’s Swinging ’60s.

Keeler had already endured a tough and traumatic adolescence earlier than the Profumo affair exploded. Born in Uxbridge, UK, in 1942, Keeler grew up in poverty after her father left the household when she was a baby. She went on to undergo sexual abuse as a youngster by the hands of her stepfather and his pals. On the age of 17, she discovered herself pregnant by a US serviceman. After he returned to America, she tried unsuccessfully to present herself an abortion. She ultimately gave delivery to a son, who died six days later. 

Having left faculty at 15 with no {qualifications}, she labored variously as a mannequin and a waitress, earlier than touchdown a job as a showgirl at Murray’s Cabaret Membership in Soho, London. It could be on the membership that she would meet a fellow mannequin, the 16-year-old Mandy Rice-Davies, and befriend the person who would act as her gateway into the elite of British society, Stephen Ward.

Ward was a profitable Harley Avenue osteopath whose purchasers included each members of the aristocracy and a few of the main cultural figures of the early Nineteen Sixties. This enabled him to socialize with a few of the most influential folks within the nation. He additionally had a sideline as a portrait artist, typically sketching these he got here into contact with, together with Queen Elizabeth II’s husband Prince Philip and her sister Princess Margaret. “Stephen was himself a good-looking man, clever, whose deal with e book learn like one thing out of Who’s Who,” Rice-Davies told BBC’s Witness History in 2013. “His shopper checklist included Liz Taylor, Sophia Loren, half the aristocracy of England. In his personal approach, he was fairly highly effective.” 

Ward had a behavior of organising his younger feminine pals with older, extra highly effective males. After assembly the 2 showgirls, he took them below his wing, and Keeler moved into his flat. Their friendship, whereas shut, remained platonic. The well-connected Ward then started to take Keeler and Rice-Davies to society events, the place he would introduce them to his many rich and influential pals and encourage liaisons between them.

“Effectively, anybody who met Stephen would perceive that Stephen had a marvellous attraction, and he had a approach with him, and I used to be very near him,” Keeler instructed the BBC. “I suppose he was improper along with his attitudes, and he was a foul man – depraved to a level, he was – however I do not know, I cared for him.” It could be via Ward that Keeler would go on to have her fateful assembly with Profumo.

Amongst Ward’s circle of pals was the previous Conservative MP Lord Astor, who recurrently hosted weekend events at his Cliveden estate in Buckinghamshire. At one in every of these occasions on 8 July 1961, among the many illustrious visitors that Lord Astor had invited was Profumo and his actress spouse Valerie Hobson, who was well-known in her personal proper for starring with Boris Karloff in Bride of Frankenstein in 1935 and in David Lean’s Nice Expectations in 1946.

Ward, who rented one of many property’s cottages from Lord Astor, was there with some pals, together with Keeler, they usually determined to utilize Cliveden’s swimming pool. “We have been all having a swim besides Stephen, as a result of he by no means went swimming, and I acquired one of many bathing fits that was too massive and no matter,” Keeler told BBC Woman’s Hour in 2001. “And Stephen mentioned, ‘Take your swimming swimsuit off, then, if you’re complaining about it.’ And so I did – as a result of it stored just about falling off, it was so massive – and threw it to 1 aspect. After which Invoice Astor and Profumo walked in.” Upon seeing the bare teenager, the 46-year-old Profumo was smitten. 

Nevertheless, additionally staying on the cottage was one other good friend of Ward’s, Captain Ivanov, a naval attaché on the Russian embassy in London. “Yevgeny was a really charming man. I used to have conversations with him concerning the rules of Communism, he actually was a pleasant chap,” Rice-Davies instructed the BBC in 2013. “There have been a number of moments once I would say to Stephen, ‘Is he a spy?’ And he would say, ‘Oh darling, all people within the Russian embassy is a spy.'” 

Keeler would later admit that she had as soon as slept with the Russian, however she instructed Lawley they hadn’t been in a relationship. “I used to be by no means actually near Ivanov, as you learn in my e book. An encounter occurred between us, however we have been by no means lovers. However with Profumo, effectively, I suppose I used to be a bit intrigued as a result of he was a battle minister, however I did not realise simply how harmful the scenario was as a result of there was no manipulating on my aspect.”

Profumo requested for her phone quantity, however Keeler instructed Girl’s Hour that she initially tried to place him off, telling him “to ask Stephen, as a result of I definitely did not need him to telephone me. He was an older man, and I did not fancy him in any respect.”

“[But Ward] definitely needed me to go off with Jack Profumo, he persuaded me to see him,” Keeler instructed the BBC in 1983. Spurred on by Ward, she agreed to exit to dinner with the politician, and the pair launched into an affair that lasted “a number of weeks, a couple of month at most”, earlier than it ended amicably.

Rumours of their relationship circulated among the many press, but it surely would possibly by no means have change into public data have been it not for an incident that happened exterior Ward’s flat in December 1962. By this time, Keeler had begun seeing two different males, a jazz singer, Aloysius “Fortunate” Gordon and a small-time felony referred to as Johnny Edgecombe. Each males had violent pasts and have been engaged in a jealous row over Keeler. When she broke issues off with Edgecombe, he turned up exterior Ward’s flat and demanded to be let in. After Rice-Davies refused, he produced a gun and started firing on the door. “We referred to as the police, and the police got here alongside, and following scorching on the tail of the police have been, in fact, the press,” Rice-Davies instructed Witness Historical past in 2013.

By this time within the Nineteen Sixties, the Chilly Conflict was in full swing, and the media had already lined quite a few high-profile spying tales. In 1961, UK Secret Service officer George Blake had been uncovered as a KGB double agent and the identical yr five Britons, who turned often called the Portland Spy Ring, had been found plotting to go official secrets and techniques to Moscow. Simply the yr earlier than the Profumo scandal, John Vassall, a homosexual Admiralty clerk, had been blackmailed into spying by the Soviet Union. With information of Edgecombe’s arrest, the press took a renewed curiosity within the swirling rumours of the battle minister’s affair – and the chance that Keeler might have obtained secrets and techniques from him and handed them to Ivanov.

As hypothesis intensified, Keeler fled to Spain, avoiding giving proof at Edgecombe’s trial; he would find yourself being sentenced to seven years in jail for possessing a firearm with the intent to hazard life. However her disappearance merely served to intensify the press’s scrutiny. Questions have been raised in Parliament concerning the allegations of Profumo’s affair and its nationwide safety implications. In response, the Secretary of State for Conflict vehemently denied to Parliament that there was any “impropriety in anyway” in his relationship with Keeler.

Keeler’s look in one other court docket case involving Fortunate Gordon, who was charged with assaulting her, gave the press causes to run ever extra headlines about her and Profumo. “After all, the press went completely mad,” mentioned Rice-Davies. “The scenario was so overwhelming for John Profumo that he needed to get up within the Home of Commons and deny that he had ever met Christine on any event, aside from a social event the place his spouse was current – besides in fact the press got here to me for affirmation that she had been having this fling with Profumo.”

Ten weeks after denying their affair, Profumo lastly admitted that he had lied to Parliament, and resigned. However the scandal continued to reverberate. Days after Profumo’s resignation, police arrested Ward and charged him with procuring girls and dwelling off immoral earnings. At his court docket case, the prosecution accused Keeler and Rice-Davies of being prostitutes and Ward of being their pimp. The proof offered for this was that the ladies had generally been given presents by the lads they’d had relationships with, they usually had given Ward money for electrical energy and meals whereas dwelling at his flat.

The trial and its witnesses’ testimonies, detailing the intercourse lives of the higher echelons of society, generated reams of newspaper protection. The press and the general public flocked to the court docket on daily basis to catch a glimpse of the colorful characters concerned. And Rice-Davies turned infamous for the phrase she used when she was instructed, within the witness field, that Lord Astor had denied that they’d slept collectively: “Effectively, he would, would not he?”

Not one of the influential pals that Ward had so rigorously cultivated would testify in his defence. “Stephen had determined that he could not deal with the scenario anymore, and the jackals have been out to get him it doesn’t matter what,” Rice-Davies instructed the BBC. On the final day of the trial, after the choose started his damning summing up, Ward took his personal life, dying three days after he was discovered responsible. Lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC is one of people that now regard the case as a miscarriage of justice. He argues that neither lady was a prostitute, that Ward had, actually, subsidised each girls off his earnings as an osteopath, and that he was the sufferer of a authorities cover-up. In 2017, a submission to evaluation Ward’s conviction was denied, and the official materials from his trial is presently sealed till 2046.

Following his demise, Keeler would additionally discover herself in bother with the regulation. In December 1963, Gordon’s three-year sentence for her assault was overturned by the Court docket of Attraction, and Keeler was accused of mendacity at his trial, as a result of she had protected two of the lads current on the assault by testifying that they weren’t there. She pleaded guilty to perjury and was sentenced to 9 months in Holloway Jail.

Within the wake of the scandal, the Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, ordered an inquiry into the Profumo affair. The report by Lord Denning in September 1963 concluded that nationwide safety had not been compromised and there was no proof to hyperlink ministers to sure tales of “vile and revolting” sexual actions. Though it was vital of the federal government’s inept dealing with of the scandal, it largely laid the blame on the “totally immoral” Ward. The report was accused of being a whitewash, and Lord Denning’s information concerning the Profumo scandal have been withheld from being publicly launched. In 2020, the Cupboard Workplace decided to keep the files confidential till 2048.

The entire episode served to wreck the credibility of Macmillan’s authorities. The PM resigned in October 1963, citing in poor health well being, and the Conservatives misplaced the overall election the next yr. Profumo would by no means return to politics however spent the remainder of his days as a volunteer at an east London charity referred to as Toynbee Corridor. He was awarded a CBE for his efforts by the Queen in 1975.

Keeler was not so fortunate. On her launch from jail, she struggled to seek out work to help herself. By the point she got here to talk to the BBC in 1983 about her ghost-written autobiography Nothing But…, Keeler had gone from being one of the talked about girls within the UK to dwelling in a council flat along with her younger son and counting on social safety.

Having lived within the shadow of the Profumo affair for twenty years, Keeler instructed Lawley that the e book was an try and get throughout her aspect of the story. “Different folks have come together with their books and garbage and full lies, writing about my life, and I assumed it was solely truthful, in any case, that I ought to get my e book printed.”

The e book could be one in every of 5 that Keeler would publish about her life, reflecting her conflicted relationship with the episode that introduced her infamy. Certainly one of her books, Scandal, went on to be the premise for the 1989 film of the same name, with Joanne Whalley starring as her. 

Douglas Thompson, the creator who labored with Keeler on her 2001 memoir The Truth at Last, instructed the BBC when she died in 2017 that he believed she was perpetually trapped by the legacy of the Profumo affair.

“I do not suppose she ever acquired away from it – that was a tragedy. She might by no means cease being Christine Keeler.” 

For extra tales and never-before-published radio scripts to your inbox, signal as much as the In History newsletter, whereas The Essential List delivers a handpicked choice of options and insights twice per week.