Bookshelf – Profumo and the affair that scandalised a nation

AN ENGLISH AFFAIR By Richard Davenport-Hines Harper Press €24 IF, as TD Oliver J Flanagan once famously asserted, there was no sex in Ireland before television, then the 1963 Profumo Affair propelled sex smack bang into the centre of public life in Britain. Sex, spies and lies: you couldnâ€â„¢t make it up â€â€ not entirely, at any rate. However as historian Richard Davenport-Hines shows in his cracking new book, An English Affair, published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the scandal, rather a little sex went an awful long way in toppling the government of the day and bringing the old order to its knees. A resolve not to waste a good scandal seemed to have been the guiding principle for the politicians then sitting on the opposition benches in parliament and for the journalists straining at the leash to make the story of a lifetime into the scandal of the century. And all this because a Tory party MP couldnâ€â„¢t keep his trousers on. Jack Profumo (Baron Profumo of the Kingdom of Sardinia) was the 48-year-old minister of war in Harold Macmillanâ€â„¢s Conservative government. Debonair and ambitious, he ticked all the boxes: Wealthy, past pupil of Harrow and Oxford, happily married (to an elegant star of British cinema) and able to point to one act of conspicuous political bravery in an otherwise mediocre career. In 1940, as a young, newly elected MP, he sided with Tory rebels in what was his first parliamentary vote. The rebels won the day in the â€Å“Norwayâ€Â debate, leading to the ousting of Neville Chamberlain and his replacement by Winston Churchill, whose national government held power throughout WWII. In Profumoâ€â„¢s rise to political stardom, even his serial adultery worked in his favour. The powerful and privileged in the early sixties viewed rumpy-pumpy with working-class girls (and boys) as making life spicy as well as rich. These teenagers fled homes that were at best drab, â€Å“England was a country where the gravy served at main meals made everything taste alike,â€Â writes the author; at worst grim, lacking electricity, running water, privacy or prospects. Being lured â€â€ or coerced â€â€ into dalliances with members of the old boysâ€â„¢ club offered the faint hope of â€Å“one long descent into respectabilityâ€Â. This was the background that 19-year-old Christine Keeler swapped with alacrity for work in a cabaret club in London, where she met the equally young and fun-loving but more hard-headed Mandy Rice-Davies. The â€Å“good-timeâ€Â girls (never prostitutes, according to Davenport-Hines) caught the eye of a series of older men who helped to launch them into society. Chief among them was Stephen Ward, playboy and osteopath, whose client list was a whoâ€â„¢s who of A-listers. Rice-Davies started an affair with Lord Astor (her later pithy retort to his denial of their affair, â€Å“Well, he would say that, wouldnâ€â„¢t he?â€Â has long since passed into daily usage). And it was in the swimming pool at Cliveden, the Astorsâ€â„¢ country home in Buckinghamshire, that Jack met Keeler. Cock-a-hoop about bagging herself a trophy, she became indiscreet. The press got wind of it and of the rumour she also had a â€Å“redâ€Â in her bed (a naval attaché at the Soviet embassy) and the rest is history. Profumo was forced to resign in June â€â„¢63 when it became clear he had lied to parliament about sleeping with Keeler. By then the country had worked itself up into a lather of malicious sanctimoniousness. Rumours of orgies abounded. Cliveden, once described as an â€Å“Italianate pleasure palaceâ€Â was now portrayed as a knocking-shop. One particularly colourful piece of innuendo involved eight high court judges taking part in an orgy. â€Å“Eight seems a bit much,â€Â Macmillan commented, with decided British understatement. His stiff upper lip was to get a workout in the following months. Harold Wilson, Labour party leader, spoke mournfully of â€Å“events that have shocked the moral conscience of the nationâ€Â and then did his utmost to whip up the affair and mortally wound the government under the pretence of national security. The gutter press, meanwhile, watching the circulation figures head into the stratosphere as the headlines grew more lurid and the details more juicy, became ever more intrusive in its hunt for the next follow-up. â€Å“Reporters and photographers,â€Â says the author, â€Å“were proud of their deceptions, inveigling their way into houses pretending to be meter readers, equipping themselves with flowers or grapes and invading hospital rooms masquerading as relatives, waylaying children on way from school ... bribing and suborning.â€Â The police didnâ€â„¢t cover themselves in glory either. Rice-Davies was arrested en route to Spain and taken to Holloway where she was subjected to humiliating body searches and shut in her cell for 20 hours a day. Advised by a senior officer to give them what they wanted so that she could get out, she spilled the beans on the party scene and Ward was arrested. Once the establishment realised that it was in meltdown, it closed ranks, painting Ward as the villain of the piece. Faced with trumped-up charges of procuring women and living off immoral earnings, and abandoned by his society friends, he took an overdose and died three days later. Keeler was imprisoned and Profumo was shunned by polite society (until rehabilitated by decades of working with the disadvantaged in the East End of London). Astor never recovered from the shame and other lesser players in the drama were judged and damned by â€Å“a national morality based on newspaper pillorying that had been raised to the level of auto-da-féâ€Â. It wasnâ€â„¢t Englandâ€â„¢s finest hour. Social history doesnâ€â„¢t often come with the spark and wit of this bookâ€â„¢s portrait of a hypocritical and class-ridden society on the cusp of profound change. Profumo, says the author, marked the end of â€Å“the sexual oppression, guilt and bullying, the whitewashing and blackballing, the lack of irony and absurd confused anger of Jack Profumoâ€â„¢s England.â€Â Three cheers for that but as we now know, as the old guard rode off into the sunset, a new oligarchy of bankers, bureaucrats and the super rich was waiting in the wings. History repeats itself and we all get screwed again, as the actress said to the bishop.