What are whores about? – Nigel Birch
Six years ago today Brigadier John Dennis Profumo, 5th Baron Profumo, CBE, died at the age of 91. To most outside the Commonwealth, his name is probably somewhat obscure; but older British readers and those familiar with the history of the Cold War will remember him as the central figure in the Profumo Affair, a sex scandal which broke 49 years ago this month and played a large part in toppling the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. The affair was for over three decades (at least until Monica Lewinsky) practically the definition of a political scandal, and inspired a number of books, plays and movies, most recently the 1989 film Scandal (in which Profumo was portrayed by Ian McKellen).
Despite his Italian name and title, “Jack” Profumo was wholly English (his family immigrated in the mid-19th century and his father was born in London). He received his commission in July of 1939 and distinguished himself in North Africa, Italy and Normandy, winning an OBE and the American Bronze Star and eventually retiring with the rank of Brigadier. From 1940-1945 he was also the Tory MP for Kettering, and after the war became active in politics, rising through a number of posts throughout the 1950s to the position of Secretary of State for War in 1960. He was married (in 1954) to actress Valerie Hobson, who was quite devoted and had even left the stage for him. To all appearances, he was destined for great things…until he unwisely became involved with a call girl named Christine Keeler.
He met her in July of 1961 at a house party given by Lord Astor; also in attendance were his wife and Dr. Stephen Ward, a prominent osteopath who treated many powerful politicians. Ward also had a sideline; he was, to put it bluntly, a pimp. Oh, not the sort who thinks he owns girls and takes their money, but rather the more genteel type who charges otherwise-independent girls “finder’s fees” for arranging dates for them with his wealthy and important clients. Keeler, needless to say, was one of the girls he worked with, and when he saw how Profumo looked at her he wasted no time in introducing them. Had Keeler been a true professional we might never have heard more, but she wasn’t; she was really more of a swinging ‘60s party girl who took money to finance her lifestyle, and she had no qualms about getting emotionally involved with her clients and other men. Her relationship with Profumo soon grew from a professional one into an actual affair, and for the first four months of 1962 she was his mistress; in a ghostwritten 2001 autobiography she claimed to have had an abortion after becoming pregnant by him. Even that probably wouldn’t have mattered had the attention of MI5 not been attracted by the fact that another of her regular clients was the Soviet naval attaché, Evegeny Ivanov.
Though Profumo was disliked by several highly-placed individuals in the spy organization, it was not in the best interests of national security to reveal anything yet…especially since the Secretary was also a personal friend of the young Queen Elizabeth II. But the chaos that was Keeler’s life eventually dictated otherwise; in December of 1962, her current boyfriend (a Jamaican drug dealer named “Lucky” Gordon) got into a knife-fight with her former boyfriend Johnny Edgecombe, and despite the fact that it seems Keeler was the one who drew Edgecombe into the altercation she refused to help him combat an assault charge resulting from his wounding Gordon. All this drama obviously attracted the attention of the press, and though the rumor of Profumo’s involvement with her quickly spread nobody could yet prove anything.
Meanwhile, John Lewis (the Labour MP for Bolton) suspected that Dr. Ward had seduced his wife, and so had him investigated; he discovered he was wrong on that account, but in the process found out about Profumo’s fling with Keeler. A few weeks after the press took interest in her sordid affairs, Lewis shared his information with at least two other politicians; by February Bob Kerby (Tory MP for Arundel and Shoreham and a former MI6 man) got ahold of a copy of a letter Profumo had indiscreetly written Keeler a year before, and which she was now trying to sell in Fleet Street to raise money for her legal difficulties. Kerby passed that letter to veteran journalist Andrew Roth, who published it in his Westminster Confidential newsletter in March of 1963…at which point the crumpet hit the fan. The Prime Minister demanded Roth be deprived of his press pass, Profumo threatened him with a libel suit and (as Roth put it) a “whitewash concocted overnight” by highly-placed Conservatives was read aloud in the House of Commons. Profumo famously stated that “There was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintanceship with Miss Keeler,” prompting outspoken MP Nigel Birch to respond with the question which forms my epigram.
The djinni, however, was out of the bottle; controversy raged in the press all through the spring and the Lord Chancellor threatened Profumo with an investigation. Finally the embattled politician confessed everything to his wife while they were on holiday in Venice, and she immediately affirmed her loyalty to him and insisted they return at once to face the music. On June 5th Profumo admitted his lies and resigned all his positions; an enraged Macmillan wanted to humiliate and punish him, but Her Majesty intervened and asked he be allowed to resign. Ward was arrested soon afterward and prosecuted for “living on the avails”, and during the trial received numerous death-threats from powerful men who feared he would expose them. When he knew he would be convicted he committed suicide via overdose of sleeping pills on July 30th, slipping into a coma and dying on August 3rd, 1963. The government’s official report on the Profumo Affair was released on September 25th, and Macmillan (who had recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer) resigned immediately afterward. A year later, the Tories lost the general election to Labour under Harold Wilson.
Christine Keeler soon vanished into obscurity, emerging almost 20 years later to author a number of accounts of the affair throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, each slightly different from the one before. Profumo was independently wealthy due to his family’s insurance business, but a few months after his resignation he started volunteering at Toynbee Hall in London’s East End, initially by washing dishes (not cleaning toilets as Wikipedia claims) and later as a fund-raiser. The support of his wife Valerie never wavered, and eventually he redeemed himself in the eyes of others as well; in 1975 he received a CBE for his decade of unremitting effort on behalf of Toynbee Hall, and in 1982 he became the charity’s chairman (and later its president). In 1995 he was seated at Her Majesty’s right hand for Margaret Thatcher’s 70th birthday party, signaling that he had at last been wholly absolved of his sins. Valerie died on November 13th, 1998 and Profumo followed her a little over seven years later, never having truly forgiven himself; as his friend Jim Thomson, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, once said, “No one judges Jack Profumo more harshly than he does himself…he says he has never known a day since it happened when he has not felt real shame”. But perhaps a more fitting epitaph was once provided by his wife: “It isn’t what happens to a man, it’s what he does with it that matters.”
One Year Ago Today
“March Updates” reports on efforts in New York to ban the use of condoms as evidence, Gail Dines’ ludicrous porn alarmism, the expansion of CNN’s war on whores, and Russian news agencies using the claims of trafficking fetishists in anti-US propaganda.
It’s this capacity to “forgive” that makes women truly beautiful. They don’t all have it and some of them can be downright witches – but, for the majority that do – when a man sees it, he sees all the hope of humanity – and something to emulate.
I’ve always thought the most fascinating part was how Profumo comported himself once he resigned. Though his wealth gave him an obvious cushion, he seemed sincerely contrite and by all accounts was truly dedicated to his work with Toynbee Hall in its own right and not as just an attempt to rehabilitate his public image and he never tried to excuse or justify what he had done. Too bad our politicians who fall from grace can’t seem to follow a similar path.
I agree. The more I read about Profumo in preparation for this column, the more respect I had for the man. Even Roth, the man who exposed him, truly believed in his contrition and respected the way he lived the rest of his life. Reading those accounts had a dramatic effect on the shape of this column; imagine what it takes to convince Maggie McNeill that a politician was a man to be respected and honored!
I would have thought it would have to involve a lot of booze and a solid dozen sessions of waterboarding. 😀
One session was enough for me. 😛
YES! YES! An acknowledgement that politicians CAN be good. Even 1 good politician counts and can change the world for the better. JFK is my favorite example of a good politician who truly changed the world for the better. I’m so glad to see this acknowledgement. I’m NOT being sarcastic here: I’m truly glad to see this.
At one time, there was an attitude among some of the wealthy and fortunate that if you were in such a good position in life, it was required that you do something with those advantages, and that you earned them by doing so.
Today, the attitude is that wealth is it’s own reward, and that you owe nothing to society, that in fact, society owes you more.
Ah yes. I believe it was Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben who said, “With great power comes EVEN MORE POWER! WOO-HOO!!!”
Mandy Rice-Davies was also involved in the trial. When it was put to her that Lord Astor denied having an affair with her, she replied: “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”
Lord Denning’s Report into the affair, a official government publication, was a best seller.
Macmillan — Supermac — certainly had an open prostatectomy complicated by an episode of clot retention, but more probably for benign prostatic hypertrophy.
I’ve always felt sorry for Dr Stephen Ward. The ‘establishment’ were out to get him and his friends in high places abandoned him. He was by all accounts an able osteopath and a very skilful artist, producing a number of pictures of the royal family which were on show in a gallery at the time of his arrest.
His weakness was that he liked mixing in high society and achieved this by introducing pretty girls to his friends. After his death both Keeler and Rice-Davis admitted that he allowed them to stay in his flat for long periods of time without paying any rent and often gave money to them.
Yes, that was my impression of him as well. I felt that his pandering wasn’t really for the money but rather for the social connections and the voyeuristic thrill.
In the fallout of the Profumo Affair, both Earl Jellicoe and Lord Lambton resigned from the government, having admitted to liasons with prostitutes. In an interview, Lord Lambton, when asked why he went to prostitutes said that he “liked variety”.
(sigh) … Well he’s right.
You know those heart shaped boxes of candy people give out at Valentine’s? Usually they are chock full of an assortment of candies and, really – some of them I don’t like. Just give me the chocolate ones with coconut in the middle, thank you.
But if that box were full of women – I would want it stuffed with as many different kinds of them as possible. Let’s see, yes … I’ll take an American (my favorite) … and a Hawaiian … a lovely Pole, Czech, Romanian, Slovakian, Russian (only one each in the box of those since they all run extremely HOT and too many will put a man in his grave!) … oh yeah – and I’ll take the Shiela there from Oz … and oh! Don’t forget that Brazilian there with the big butt! And yes, of course I want that Icelandic girl – the one as tall as me … mmmm, we can arm wrestle afterwards! Grrrrrr!
Okay, I’m about to show my real, as opposed to simply my chronlogical, age. I do agree about the beauty of variety in women, I can’t think of a single ethnic group, skin color, race what have you in which I haven’t seen a woman I’ve considered stunning. But my wife and I are coming up on 30 years of marriage, and more than that together, and as we both note the physical desire of some member of the opposite sex, we both end up noting that there’s no way we’d go there. We’ve spent way too long training each other and it’d just be too much effort to try to get somebody else to get it right. Now Monica Belluci…
Ah, Romanians… great ladies.
They say that variety is the spice of life, and there are LOTS of different spices!
The real trick is admitting the desire for variety, and exactly how strong it is in you before even thinking of marriage. I’ve always known that I could never resist doing more than window shopping, which is why I never married and never will, since it would be totally unfair to any potential partner.
I totally disagree. The idea that marriage requires absolute fidelity on the man’s part dates only to the late 19th century. If you don’t want to get married for other reasons (and there are plenty), well and good. But if the only thing stopping you is the requirement to do some thing absolutely or else, you need to simply A) be honest with your woman up front, and B) only “cheat” with professionals, who will be discreet and have a vested interest in not interfering with your relationship. If the woman can’t accept that it’s her decision, but at least you were honest.
Yeah but … some wives just don’t want to know about it. 😛
Being an honest person, I usually tell my female friends early on about my attitude towards complete monogamy, and every girl (when I was younger) or woman I have ever known, has reacted with, at best pity and disapproval, rising to complete disgust. I’m sure there are more open minded women around somewhere, but realistically, you can only work with the ones that you can meet.
Financial capability was not the problem either. I am an Accountant and was the General Manager of a US multinational company until I took early retirement.
I have know married women who would tolerate their husband having sex with prostitutes if she learned about it only after they were married. Mostly, they were wives of businessmen, who accepted that sex was a part of doing business.
On the other hand, I know of a man who’s wife was so insanely jealous that she would openly follow him around both day an night in her car to make sure he never spoke to another woman.
Thai wives are famously intolerant of infidelity, and take extreme measures to deal with it, which is why Thailand has the best penis re-attachment surgeons in the world 🙂
I am by nature inclined to be truthful, often to my detriment. Slightly OT, I am also into BDSM, and you wouldn’t believe (or perhaps you would) how difficult it is to find a prostitute once you explain what it is you want. (No bondage, scat, or weird costumes.) Yes I know there are “specialists”, but in most places, they are rarer than hens’ teeth.
Professional subs are indeed rare, for reasons which should be obvious; most of them work from brothels so they can be chaperoned.
Doh! (Again). Lord Lambton and Earl Jelicoe resigned in 1973, in another of the politico-sexual scandals of the later 20th century. It was nothing to do with Profumo. Apologies.
I’d echo what Krulac had to say about the hearts of women. And I found the quote, “It isn’t what happens to a man, it’s what he does with it that matters.” to be golden. God, I hope they have that to say about me one day.
Interesting also in that the Profumo Affair knocked the acrimonious divorce proceedings of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll off the front pages.
Ah yes, the “headless” man and the Duchess. Was his identity ever established?
I was a very young child when all this took place, and really understood nothing of what was going only, only that the presenters spoke very seriously about it on the evening news, and my grandparents were interested. Somehow I misinterpreted it as “The perfume affair”.
Even later, at school, it really wasn’t discussed.
Cool to finally read what it was really all about.
Where are they now?
Well, Mandy has her nightclubs in Israel and houses in Barbadoes while Christine subsists in bed-sitters, having recently been fired from her job as a school dinner-lady after the headmaster found out who she was.
Oops. Perhaps you can edit Maggie.
And just for a bit of fun because it is true. I tried on being alpha and a bit of a “jerk” for a while. Worked a treat.
But I tired of it pretty quickly and found it easier to just tell women I have money.
“That” photograph of Christine Keeler lead my back here. I’ve been reading a modern account of all that happened. We were given an “official” view of things, but the deceit, lies, dissimulation, hypocrisy and cant about the events, seen as history, is quite remarkable; how can one ever trust politicians or the cops again?
Read for yourselves:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/An-English-Affair-Profumo-ebook/dp/B008NZF982/ref=pd_ys_iyr1
I’ve finished reading this account of sex and class and the Profumo affair. I can remember what we were told through the papers — I was quite young at the time — but this book reveals layers of dishonesty and deceit that I couldn’t have known: but, of course, I don’t know just how “objective” it is. It seems clear that, contrary to accepted wisdom, that Keeler wasn’t a prostitute, that Ward wasn’t a pimp, but that both of them challenged the accepted norms of the time — and paid for it. Ward and Keeler certainly seem to have been stitched up by politicians, police and lawyers, and deserted by their friends. And by stitched up I mean fabricated evidence, corrupt policemen, lawyers who didn’t want the whole truth to be revealed, and by judges who were totally complicit, and shameless about their involvement: it was morality ahead of truth.
Lord Denning reported into the whole unhappy business; yet his report seems to be little more than the lubricious meanderings of a man determined that the old order should stay, that the morality of the time should prevail. It is very disconcerting to read just how his moralising attitude affected his judgement, how he accepted what he wanted to believe weighed more than “weighing” the evidence, and how he discounted things that were true but that he was unable to believe in. But then, no one really expects that a judge lives in the “real world”, do they?
Maggie, you might consider rewriting the above; some of you details do seem to be incorrect, even if traditionally accepted; Keeler wasn’t a prostitute in the usual meaning of the word — she was more of an “airhead” –, nor was Ward a pimp, nor did he live off the avails. And the (labour) politicians invented a totally spurious story about “security” in order to discredit the government. Of course, that government was by the “establishment”, and that is what they wanted to overthrow, yet once the conservatives had been replaced by labour, those politicians showed themselves to be as morally inane as their predecessors.
The story is a ghastly tale of how the establishment covered it tail, not always successfully. I’m very uncertain that I now accept that any inquiry lead by a judge can be impartial or even lead to a “correct” understanding of the events. The word “whitewash” springs to mind.
It looks as if the trial of Stephen Ward might unravel. A barrister claims judicial collusion—by the LCJ—in preventing some evidence being heard.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/profumo-scandal-revisited-a-plea-by-the-model-the-qc-and-the-impresario-to-clear-the-name-of-osteopath-who-took-his-life-50-years-ago-8978708.html
So far, I’ve recently read three books about the Profumo affair, and the trial of Stephen Ward. The most recent explains the legal background, and the grounds for an appeal to the Court of Appeal—it lists 12 reasons why Stephen Ward’s trial was defective.
Interestingly, it also includes the English legal definition of a prostitute; it is a woman who ‘arbitrarily’ or ‘indiscriminately’ sells her body for sex. The woman, I gather, need not accept all clients. The receipt of an occasional gift does not make a woman a legally-defined prostitute. Therefore, neither Christine nor Mandy could be legally described as prostitutes. That wasn’t at all the impression the jury at Stephen Ward’s trial were given.
Similarly, it gives guidance to the meaning of ‘living in part or in whole off the proceeds of immoral earnings’. It does not mean the tiniest fraction of a prostitute’s earnings—Stephen Ward received payment for their telephone bill, for example. His earnings at the time were very substantial, and the trivial amounts he received from the girls don’t (shouldn’t) count as “in part or in whole”.
And, only men can live off “immoral earnings”, not women.
Prosecuting counsel (Mervyn Griffith-Jones, of ‘Lady Chatterly’ fame) and the trial judge clearly took the view that Ward was prosecuted for his ‘immoral’ life-style; the entire tenor of their remarks is to this effect. Living an “immoral” lifestyle was not then, nor is it now, an offence under English law.
The full transcript of the trial is not available; it is the only English trial for which this is unavailable. Mandy applied for, and was given, her part of the transcript relating to her evidence; even that was censored, all names were blacked out.
There are now moves to refer the trial of Stephen Ward to the Court of Criminal Appeal—the Court of Appeal only deals with matters of law, not those of fact. The Court has the power to require the release of the original transcript. It will be fascinating to see what happens.
I was young at the time of Stephen Ward’s trial, and didn’t really understand what it was all about. And I was naive, thinking that the police and the judiciary were paragons of virtue. This belief I lost more than a few years ago, but until now I hadn’t realised just exactly how the Establishment could set someone up, and how the judiciary could collude in his conviction. Actually, it seems clear that the jury convicted on the basis of his ‘immorality’ rather than on the charges (which were as good as baseless).
The best books, if you want to read more, are:
1. Richard Davenport: A English Affair, for general information and background
2. Caroline Kennedy and Phillip Knightly; How the English Establishment framed Stephen Ward, for an account of Ward’s life and trial
3. Geoffrey Robertson; Stephen Ward was Innocent, OK, for a forensic analysis of the Establishment and juridical/judicial machinations, and for the grounds even now on which an appeal against conviction should succeed.
[…] was after Rachman’s death, however, that Rice-Davies’ ship finally came in, via the Profumo Affair and the associated persecution of Stephen Ward. She had always hoped to achieve stardom, and […]