The Profumo Scandal

This was a scandal that rocked the establishment in the early 1960s. W10 has a link to these fascinating events.

Politics and Society

The Conservative Government of Harold Macmillan took power in 1957. Macmillan himself was prime minister until 1963, when he was replaced by Alec Douglas Home. It only had a few big beasts. Many of its members have been well served by the judgment of history. The PM himself was an astute political operator but was no felt by many to be out of touch.

Britain had been devastated by the war. There were derelict bomb sites in many parts of London. We now know, though it was not known then, that the Labour Government of Clement Attlee had been very keen to ensure that Britain developed nuclear weapons. The Conservatives had carried on that policy when they came to power in 1951.

During war time, all sorts of social conventions had been breached. This was evident in the “GI Babies” as much as anything else. A devastated Britain required re-building and people answered that call from right across the Empire, as it still was. That included people from the Caribbean. North Kensington was one of the places that became home to the migrants from the Caribbean in the 1950s. There were also displaced people and prisoners of war to be repatriated. So in reality it was a time of change and flux.

Over the course of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the “Iron Curtain” had gone up across Eastern Europe, there was a feeling that Russia was now our enemy and that it was possible that there would be a nuclear war. There was also spying on an industrial scale by all sides.

So while on the surface it may have seemed that Britain had survived WW2 with her institutions in tact and that nothing had changed, that was in reality not the case. As ever, change was more visible in London than in other places.

The events have been the subject of various films, including Scandal back in 1989 and an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Ward.

Further reading:

Andrew Marr – Making of Modern Britain

Joshua Levine- The Secret History of the Blitz.

David Kynaston – Austerity Britain

Andrew Marr’s Making of Modern Britain, is regularly repeated and is available on BBC iplayer and YouTube.

The Principals

John Profumo – Minister of War

Christine Keeler – a young woman of 20 odd who works in a night club called Murrays off Regent Street. Murray’s was a club where patrons pay to see scantily clad women dance. They can also buy the girls expensive drinks or get to know them better elsewhere. Lived for many years on the World’s End Estate in Chelsea. Buried at Kensal Green Cemetary.

Mandy Rice Davies – a friend of Christine Keeler, who also worked at Murrays.

Stephen Ward – an osteopath, which at the time was not as well regarded as it is now. He had trained in the US. He had served in the war in a variety of capacities but not as a doctor as such. He has a penchant for young girls. Friend of Christine Keeler

Eugene Ivanov – A military attaché at the Soviet Embassy in Notting Hill. He was working for Soviet intelligence. He has a wife back in Moscow.

Johnny Egdecomb – a small time hustler. He was briefly involved with Christine Keeler. Asked by Ward to shoot at his flat.

Lucky Gordon – a small time dope dealer. Got pathologically attached to Christine Keeler.

Bill Astor – owner of Cliveden. He had offered Stephen Ward the use of a cottage on his grounds.

The basic facts

Stephen Ward had carved out a bit of a niche for himself providing osteopathy services to the great and the good. He had apparently treated Winston Churchill. He had treated Bill Astor. As a thank you, Lord Astor had allowed Ward to use a cottage on his grounds for a pepper corn rent.

Ward has been married briefly and divorced. By the time of the events in question, he has developed a penchant for hanging out young women who he seemed to offer as bait to the rich and powerful. He befriended Christine Keeler, when she first moved to London in the late 1950s. He also got to know Mandy Rice Davies a couple of years later. Both were beautiful and he offered them on a plate to his friends. There does not seem to be any evidence that money was changing hands.

In July 1961, Ward took Christine Keeler to Cliveden. She was swimming in a pool [naked] when she was seen by John Profumo. They had an affair, for want of a better word. It seems to have lasted about 6 months. Stephen Ward was also friends with Ivanov, Russian spy. Keeler also had sex with him, apparently only once. Keeler met Ivanov many years later in Moscow. He told her that his wife had divorced him when she found out what he was up to in England.

According to Keeler in her book, Ward asked her to find out from Profumo whether or when Britain and the Americans planned to put nuclear weapons in West Germany.

Ward’s activities as someone who knows a Russian spy and someone who knows Profumo began to rouse some suspicion. He was visited by M15. According to Keeler’s account, he decided that he needed to get rid of her. she says he planned to use a black person as his instrument. She says that he had got into the habit of visiting North Kensington. He would buy dope and he would paint people in cafes.

According to Keeler, they went to El Rios Café. This was a café which in the early 1960s was owned by Frank Critchlow. It was at 127 Westbourne Park Road. Ward and Keeler met Lucky Gordon in the café. He became pathologically attached to Keeler and a small time drug dealer to Ward. Gordon began to stalk Keeler. Keeler then met Johnny Edgecomb, through friends. He said he knew Gordon and could make him stop harassing Keeler. The result was that Edgecomb got into a fight with Gordon and apparently knifed him. Gordon suffered a fairly serious injury that required stitches. When the stitches were taken out, he sent them round to Keeler and Ward in Wimple Mews.

Johnny Edgecomb gives a fairly detail account of his involvement in the events. He say that he and Keeler spent 6 weeks getting high on drugs and having sex at her flat in Sheffield Terrace. Keeler does not mention this in her book. He claims that she told him all secrets and about Ward’s activities as a spy. She said she and Ward were terrified of Lucky Gordon. Edgecomb also says that Profumo came round during this period to have sex with Keeler.

Edgecomb claims that Ward button holed him one evening and told him that he (Ward) feared going to prison for life for spying. He also said Keeler would be going to prison for a long time as well. Edgecomb, in love with Keeler, agreed to help. Days later he met Ward behind Whitleys. According to Edgecomb, Ward gave him a gun. Ward asked him to shoot up Keeler’s flat. Edgecomb told him that he did not need a gun as Keeler had a gun he could use. She went out one day and met Lucky Gordon. They therefore moved to a new flat in Lancaster Gate. Edgecomb also claims that he was roughed up by two heavies working with the Krays who told him to do what Ward had asked “if he wanted to stay alive”.

In October 1962, Gordon and Edgecomb see each other at All Nighter Club. Edgecomb’s efforts to make Gordon leave Keeler alone results in a fight. Edgecomb allegedly knifed Gordon. Edgecomb and Keeler, leave in a hurry. They go to Brentford, via a “shebeen” in Powis Square and stay there.

Both Ward and Keeler feel that they are being trapped in a web of their own making. Edgecomb says that Keeler was getting legal advice from Michael Eddowes and he was offering her the use of flat in Regent’s Park. Keeler left and Edgecomb was left on his own brooding. Keeler apparently got more dope from a friend of Edgecomb’s which upset him. Then Edgecomb spends a day getting high of amphetamines. At some point Keeler rang him to say that she would not help him get a solicitor and would tell the police that he cut Gordon.

Edgecomb feeling angry and abandoned, picked up Armed with Keeler’s gun and got a cab to Wimpole Mews where Keeler was staying with Ward and Mandy Rice Davies. Mandy Rice Davies was there and tried to stop him entering the building. Edgecomb say Keeler threw a pound note at him. That was not a sensible thing to do to some one already enraged. He tried to shoot the lock out and failed. As he was leaving he looked up and saw Keeler at a window. Accidentally or not, the gun went off and he appeared to have fired a number of shots at Keeler.

Edgecomb hides the gun in the garden, hails and cab and goes to Brentford. He is arrested there and then taken to Marylebone Police Station. Writing some 40 years after the events in question, he cannot explain why he acted as he did. He says himself he was a small time hustler, Keeler always had money and he thought he was in love with her. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is that it brought the whole pack of cards of whatever Stephen Ward was up to crashing down on them all.

Stephen Ward is as much of a mystery. Was he a Soviet spy passing information to Ivanov. Or was he someone with the best interests of the United Kingdom at heart. Someone who with his unrivalled contact book, genuinely believed that he could help the United Kingdom mediate between Russia and America to avert nuclear Armageddon. At the time, nuclear Armageddon was not a theoretical fear it was very real fear. The Bay of Pigs incident was October 1962.

Given the number of skeletons that he had in his cupboard, it seems to me that Ward should at the very least kept a low profile if not leave the country, as his friends suggested. He chose not to do so. A succession of trials means that he and Keeler come under more and more scrutiny.

Ward continued to write to Macmillan asking either for help or to get involved in negotiations. He made himself a nuisance and drew attention to himself when he needed to lie low.

Ward had created a monster that he could not control. I

The press are on the scent, the Labour MP George Wigg has the scent of something. Various ministers were up to misdeeds of various kinds. It was only a matter of time before the whole pack of cards came down. Profumo could possibly have ridden out the storm if he had told the truth when asked. Instead he made the notorious “I did not have sexual relations with that women” statement not just to the Prime Minister in private but also in the House of Commons. Misleading the House of Commons back then was a big deal. And so he did the gentlemanly thing and resigned.

Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies enjoyed 15 minutes of fame which certainly for Keeler morphed into a lifetime of notoriety.

It was probably obvious to anyone but Ward that he would be abandoned by his friends in high society. More and more digging was done into what he was up to. He was ultimately charged with living off immoral earning. There was no real evidence that he was. Keeler certainly did not think that he had. She wondered why Ward was not charged with spying. Her explanation, having read hundreds of now de-classified documents, was that the Government wanted to avoid having to admit to the Americans that there was another British person spying for the Russians. At the time, there had been a couple of high profile spying cases and she thinks the Government just did not want another one.

Ward went on trial for living off immoral earnings. Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies had to give evidence against him. A couple of other women gave evidence which either was not believed or was retracted once in witness box. He was convicted. On the day between the conviction and returning the next day to find out his punishment, he took an overdose of pills. He died a few days later.

There is no doubt that it was a most extraordinary chapter in English political history. And it astonishing to think that a couple of small time hustlers connected to W10 were the catalyst that brought the whole thing down.

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