His subsequent wholly admirable charity work notwithstanding, John Profumo will be remembered as the the Secretary of State for War whose adulterous affair with the glamorous demi-mondaine Christine Keeler did more than anything to hasten the resignation of the Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1963. The scandal had an impact unique among sex and politics scandals in modern British life. Subsequent "minister and call-girl" stories — of which there were not a few — had nothing like its impact, nor were they treated with such seriousness.
There were many reasons for this. At the outset of the 1960s the more emancipated moral climate represented by the acquittal of Penguin Books over the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover still had to contend with the innate puritanism of the British people, which produced something of a backlash, especially on questions of sexual behaviour. Certainly, in an era when The Times could proclaim in the headline to a leading article on the matter: IT IS A MORAL ISSUE, the personal conduct of ministers was still held to count for something.
The story also had an alluring security element: the British War Minister was sharing Keeler’s sexual favours with those of a Russian naval attaché (ie spy), Captain Yevgeny Ivanov. And although the dangers of this were more imagined than real (Ivanov said later that Keeler would have been incapable of remembering the details of any military secrets imparted to her, even had pillow talk included them) it made for good headlines — and much righteous indignation from the parliamentary Opposition.
To add to all this, Profumo stoked the fires himself. His failure to come clean at the outset about the nature of his encounters with Keeler led to months of innuendo in the popular press which would simply not die down. Keeler’s life was of that colourful sort whose details were difficult to keep under wraps. She simply could not keep her mouth shut about anything she did. Jealous lovers fought over her in public, stabbing and wounding each other. One of them fired shots at her as she took refuge in the flat of another protector, the somewhat sinister and shadowy society osteopath, Stephen Ward, who became a key figure in the affair as a man later convicted of living off the earnings of prostitutes. When the case against her assailant came to trial Keeler, a key witness, had mysteriously disappeared abroad, and it was rumoured — quite wrongly as it happened — that Profumo had had a hand in this.
About his sexual relationship with Keeler Profumo consistently lied to parliamentary colleagues in private — which he might just have survived. But on March 22, 1963, he lied to Parliament — which he could not. While on holiday in Venice with his wife, the actress Valerie Hobson, in early June 1963, the burden of guilt suddenly became too much for him. He confessed to her; she persuaded him to return to London where he confessed to the Tory Chief Whip; he wrote a letter of resignation to the Prime Minister. It was immediately accepted. In the words of Lord Denning’s report on the affair: "Mr Profumo did not wait on the Queen to hand over the seals of office. They were sent by messenger. He applied for the Chiltern Hundreds and ceased to represent his constituency. The House of Commons held him to have been in contempt of the House. His name was removed from the Privy Council. His disgrace was complete."
It was the swiftest and most comprehensive eclipse of a public life imaginable. And in an age considerably before that in which the peccadilloes of such a man might well have the publishers queueing up with their chequebooks, it meant a long sojourn in obscurity. Profumo worked his way back, becoming a respected figure for his work among the poor and the down-and-outs of the East End. Whether this was any compensation for the loss of his political career was doubtful. But to his eternal credit, Profumo never offered any retrospective justification of himself. He accepted that "the Profumo case" would never go away in his lifetime, and that the periodic exhumation of its details was his lot in perpetuity.
John Dennis Profumo was of Italian origins. His grandfather had emigrated to Britain, where his own father had served for some years as a diplomat. Through him, Profumo held the title of 5th Baron of the late United Kingdom of Italy. John Profumo was the eldest son of a successful barrister, Albert Profumo, KC, and his Scots wife Martha, who were considerable figures among the landed gentry of Warwickshire.
He was educated at Harrow and Brasenose College, Oxford, where he took a degree in agriculture and political economy. He was a dashing figure, a good athlete and a member of the University Air Squadron. No expense was spared on a broad education for him, and after Oxford he was sent on a round-the-world trip, visiting the Soviet Union, China, Japan and the United States. At university he had first become interested in politics and after a period as chairman of the West Midlands Federation of the Junior Imperial League, he became, at 21, chairman of the East Fulham Conservative Association. Its MP was William Waldorf Astor, later to become the 3rd Viscount Astor, a close friend and a prominent figure in the Profumo affair. Four years later, at a by-election in 1940, Profumo was elected to the Commons as MP for Kettering.
But the war had already caught up with him. He had joined the 1st Northants Yeomanry in 1939 and later served in the 20th Armoured Brigade. He had a good war, particularly on the public relations side, for which he had flair. He was mentioned in dispatches in the North African campaign and later, as senior air staff liaison officer to Field Marshal Alexander was appointed OBE (military) during the Italian campaign.
He lost his parliamentary seat in the Labour landslide of 1945, so he remained in the Army, being promoted to brigadier and serving as chief of staff of the UK Mission to Japan for a further two years. In 1947 he resigned his commission to return to politics. He became broadcasting adviser to the Conservative Party and in 1950 returned to Parliament as MP for Stratford-on-Avon. In 1952 he became parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation. It was not a happy time for British aviation, with Britain losing out to the US on both civil aircraft design and air routes. But the junior aviation minister demonstrated his faith in British aero-engineering when he sportingly flew as chef and steward to the aircrew of a BEA Viscount airliner in the 1953 London to Christchurch, New Zealand, Air Race.
In 1954, he married Valerie Hobson, who was then playing the lead in The King and I at Drury Lane. She gave up her career soon afterwards and devoted herself to the support of his. In 1957 he became parliamentary under-secretary for the colonies, and in 1958 for foreign affairs. He was appointed Minister of State for Foreign Affairs in 1959 and a year later, Secretary of State for War. This was a much more challenging post, in which he had to oversee the abolition of conscription and the creation of Britain’s first all-Regular Army for 20 years.
Profumo, in dinner-jacket, first met Christine Keeler, wearing nothing but a dripping towel, at the swimming pool of Cliveden, the country home of Lord Astor, in whose grounds Stephen Ward rented a cottage. Keeler was Ward’s guest, Profumo was Astor’s up at the "big house". On the sultry evening of July 8, 1961, he had gone down to the pool with his host, and their wives, for a cooling after-dinner stroll. There, Keeler was frolicking naked and had hastily to cover herself. The impact of her partially draped charms was not lost on the minister. The next day at a swimming party at the pool, at which the Soviet naval attaché was also present, Profumo asked her for her telephone number.
Their affair cannot be accounted among the great passions. It effectively lasted no more than a month. Profumo doubtless thought he was conducting it in great secrecy. He took her for drives in ministerial cars and on at least one occasion slept with her at his home while his wife was away. Stephen Ward, at whose home Keeler at that time lived, was certainly in the know and was not discreet; nor was Keeler.
A few weeks after the Cliveden party, Profumo was warned by Sir Norman Brook, Secretary to the Cabinet, against Ward, who was openly claiming Profumo’s friendship and was also friendly with Ivanov. Profumo suspected that the Security Service knew of his affair with Keeler and wrote to her telling her he would not be able to see her for some time. His letter, of August 8, 1961, — subsequently to be know as the "Darling" letter from its affectionate exordium — was effectively the end of their liaison.
Thereafter there seemed no reason for Profumo not to breath easy. But he had reckoned without the tempestuous personal life of Keeler. Among the many lovers she took during the next year were two West Indians, one of whom, John Edgecome, became extremely jealous both of his "rival" and of Keeler.
On December 14, Edgecome called round at the Marylebone flat where Keeler was then staying and as she told him from an upstairs window to go away fired several shots at her. After Edgecombe’s arrest, Keeler — frightened and at the same time revelling in being the object of such violent and public passions — now became massively indiscreet, consulting all sorts of friends and acquaintainces as to what she ought to do, and asking all and sundry "how this might affect Jack Profumo". She told the police about her and Profumo and Ivanov, too. Rumours now flew thick and fast, among those MPs in the know and in Fleet Street, with Profumo’s name prominent in all of them.
Matters came to a head when the Edgecombe case came to trial and Keeler was found to have disappeared abroad. Profumo was suspected of having spirited away a key witness whose indiscretion could have done him immense damage. He had already denied any sexual relationship with Keeler to the Attorney-General, the Chief Whip and the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary. He followed up his denials with action, and successfully sued two magazines for libel.
The Tory high command now decided he must repeat these denials in the House. Thus, on Friday, March 22, 1963, flanked by the Leader of the House and by the Attorney-General, who some minutes later gave way to the Prime Minister, Profumo denied that he had anything to do with Keeler’s disappearance, which was true, and, in one of the most barefaced lies ever uttered in the Commons, affirmed that there had been "no impropriety whatsoever" in his acquaintanceship with her. There was general government relief. Later in the afternoon, Profumo and his wife joined the Queen Mother at Sandown Park Races: respectable and triumphant.
But rumour continued. Finally, Macmillan, who seemed to have been sleepwalking through the crisis, sanctioned an inquiry, to be undertaken by the Lord Chancellor. By this time Profumo could see the game was up: he returned from his Italian holiday, made his confessions and tendered his resignation.
In the parliamentary debate of censure that followed, the Opposition, unlike The Times, which harped on the moral note, deplored the security aspects of the affair. Macmillan, as head of the Security Service, was censured for being one of the last to hear of Profumo’s undesirable friends. His defence was, for such a master of unflappability, a feeble one. He ended by admitting his sense of betrayal and appearing to invite the sympathy of the House. The Government won the vote, but the number of Conservative abstentions — 27 — were eloquent of party disenchantment with his leadership. Macmillan had survived; but he had been mortally wounded. Although he was not directly brought down by "that girl" — as he always referred to her — the Keeler affair created the atmosphere in which all talk both in the party and in the country thereafter was of who would succeed him as Prime Minister.
Profumo sold his London home and retired to Hertfordshire. An unfamiliar silence descended on his life. But idleness was foreign to his nature and some months after the heat and clamour of the Keeler affair and the suicide of Stephen Ward had died down, he telephoned Toynbee Hall, the settlement for the poor and needy in London’s East End, and offered his services. Thereafter, commuting four times a week from his 20-room Georgian country mansion, he devoted his energies to attempting to help alcoholics, drug addicts, ex-convicts, the elderly, the sick and the lonely.
He was also, in the process, effecting his own rehabilitation and an acceptance by the society that had rejected him. Finally, a Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, paid a visit to Toynbee Hall, spied Profumo in an obscure corner and shook his hand in front of the press cameras. In 1968 Profumo accepted the Home Secretary’s invitation to join the board of Grendon psychiatric Prison in Buckinghamshire. This he gladly did, but he continued to regard his East End work as the most important. It achieved official recognition in his appointment as CBE in 1975. He himself served as chairman of Toynbee Hall from 1982 to 1985, since when he had been president.
After the traumatic events of 1963, Valerie Hobson, like her husband, engaged in charity work, concentrating on mentally handicapped children and on relief work abroad. She was at his side when he went to Buckingham Palace to receive the insignia of a CBE from the Queen.
She died in 1998. John Profumo is survived by their son, the author David Profumo.
