Profumo Affair

Political scandal involving British Secretary of State for War John Profumo, Russian naval attaché Eugene Ivanov and showgirl Christine Keeler. It contributed to Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's resignation and the subsequent Labour victory in the 1964 general election.

In 1962, John Dennis Profumo, high ranking Tory politician and Secretary of State for War, became sexually involved with a London showgirl called Christine Keeler, while married to movie star Valerie Hobson.

Keeler had worked at a cabaret club in London until she was recruited into the circle surrounding fashionable London osteopath Stephen Ward, along with another showgirl from the same club. Ward regularly held sultry gatherings for the high society at his Wimpole Mews flat as well as at Lord Astor's country mansion at Cliveden. One 8 June 1961, Profumo met Keeler for the first time at Cliveden and soon afterwards began an affair with her. After only about one month, he ended their relationship via letter, fearing publicity. However, Keeler and Ward, who had been told about the affair, were not as discrete as Profumo and rumors started spreading.

Keeler also had an affair with Eugene (Yevgeny) Ivanov, a naval attaché at the Soviet embassy, at the same time as she was seeing Profumo. Newspaper headlines about her alleged affair with Profumo, were soon caused by Keeler's turbulent private life. In a London police station, after an ex-boyfriend had fired shots at her apartment, she revealed her affairs with Profumo and Ivanov. To the public mind, Profumo's suspected involvement with Keeler "was deeply, deliciously shocking"(Brown). At the same time, with the Cold War at it's height, the possibility that Keeler might have passed on state secrets to Ivanov was a threatening scenario.

After Keeler failed to appear in court as a witness in her ex-boyfriend's trial, the Tory high command demanded of Profumo to make a statement in the House of Commons. On 22 March 1963, Profumo stated, truthfully, that he had nothing to do with Keeler's non-appearance in court and, untruthfully, that there had been "no impropriety whatever" in his relationship with Keeler. He even successfully sued two magazines for libel. Meanwhile, Macmillan sanctioned an inquiry into the prevailing allegations of an affair between Profumo and Keeler, "that girl" as Macmillan habitually called her.

On a summer holiday in Venice, Profumo confessed the affair to his wife and was convinced by her (and very likely also by the pressure of the inquiry) to return to London and inform the Conservative Party of his liaison with Keeler. When he spoke before the House of Commons again, he admitted his earlier lie "with deep remorse," and announced his resignation. Stephen Ward was prosecuted for living on immoral earnings and commited suicide on the last day of his trial. Keeler was tried and imprisoned for similar reasons.

After Ward's death, Lord Denning released a report on the Profumo affair stating that there had been no compromise to national security. Public curiousity over the identity of a naked man, wearing a mask, who was seen serving guests in a photograph taken at one of Ward's kinky dinner parties, was not satisfied in the report.

Following the Denning report, in October of 1963, Macmillan resigned from office due to ill health, very likely exacerbated by the events of the year. He was temporarily replaced by Sir Alec Douglas Home, but, in October 1964, the general election brought a narrow victory for Harold Wilson and the Labour Party.

After his departure from politics, Profumo devoted his time to charity work at Toynbee Hall in London's East End and received a CBE for his efforts in 1975. He never talked publicly about his affair with Keeler. Profumo died in 2006 at the age of 91

In 2001, Keeler published an autobiography under the title "The Truth at Last," making various sensational claims without backing them up.

Sources

• Brown, Derek. "1963: The Profumo scandal." The Guardian 10 Apr. 2001. guardian.co.uk. Web. 14 May 2011.
• "Times obituary: John Profumo." The Times 10 Mar. 2006. Times Online. Web. 14 May 2011.