Platt has used court records, memoirs, newspapers and parliamentary speeches to understand his mother’s story. He feels that at the time of the Profumo Affair, judges and the courts seemed to punish people not because they were found to be guilty of a crime, but because the authorities believed it was important that people, and particularly those who were considered immoral or promiscuous, were seen by the larger public to be punished. His campaign argues that the criminal justice system let Keeler down and shows how the men around her destroyed her reputation for their own ends, be that to save their own skin or to exploit her for financial gain.
Since Ward died before being sentenced, Keeler was the only one imprisoned from the sequence of events that became known as the ‘Profumo Affair’. In 1993, Platt was in the studio audience at the Clive Anderson show featuring his mother. Keeler told the audience that she was the first person to go to prison for not stating who was at the scene of a crime when a crime occurred, but Platt recalls that the host moved on to the next question, because her point was too complex to discuss.
Over 250 pages of evidence and legal documents were sent to the CCRC and at the time of going to print, Keeler’s case was still being examined. If it can’t help, then the case will be referred back to the Justice Secretary for a pardon.
Sixty years on, her story isn’t over.
Chapter 22
More Lying than Spying?
The Profumo scandal has spawned countless newspaper articles and TV programmes, a film, many books, including Keeler’s ghosted autobiographies, and even a West End musical. The image of Keeler sitting astride an Arne Jacobsen chair taken by photographer Lewis Morley remains one of the most iconic images of the 1960s. And sixty years on, that story of a chance meeting between a young girl and a politician, and the somewhat brief and casual affair that followed, continues to hold our attention. But how much of the narrative is true?
At the very beginning of the scandal, and throughout her life, Keeler faced many accusations that she made up elements of her story for money in a time of ‘chequebook journalism’ and later to maintain a career based on being ‘that girl’. She’s been criticised over, and doubted for, her claims that Ward was spying for Russia, that Ward asked her to obtain atomic secrets from Profumo, how long her affair with Profumo lasted, that she fell pregnant by Profumo and procured an abortion and whether she slept with Ivanov once, several times or not at all. People have called her a liar and a fantasist.
There’s no denying that for Keeler, once the scandal broke, ‘selling her story’ became her only career option. The stigma of her part in the scandal lasted for many, many years, continuing to narrow her life choices even as others involved at the time were able to move on. In 1963, she was a young, uneducated, working-class girl and her options were limited even before she became involved with Profumo. She often had nowhere to live and had to rely on friends offering her meals and accommodation. Her face (and her body) had always been her fortune. She was also easily manipulated, having had a lifetime of those she’d loved and trusted doing just that. It might be true that Keeler was guided in what she revealed to ensure her account of the scandal was as entertaining as it could be, it might be that she was unclear as to exactly what had happened and open to suggestion as to what the men in her life were up to. As time passed, in order to understand what had happened to her, she may have had to fill in details she couldn’t recall or fathom. The truth might lie somewhere in the middle of that tangled mess.
Without her basic needs such as accommodation paid for by a friend such as Ward, as they had been in the past, Keeler needed money to live. And people gave her money, attention and apparent safety when she told them her story. Ward also made the point that once he was convicted, newspapers could run whatever stories they liked without worrying about potential libel claims. After Ward’s death, even relatively minor figures, John Hamilton-Marshall and Robin Drury, got to sell stories to the press too. There was always a thirst for more, and the Profumo Affair became a gravy train.
There seems to be no doubt that Ivanov was a spy. He admits it himself and, as Knightley and Kennedy explain, at the time it was understood by Russia and England that assistant naval attachés worked in an intelligence role. The ‘intelligence game’ that suited everyone, they say, allowed a two-way flow of information, that helped diplomatic communication.1 While Ivanov’s actual mission remains unknown, it’s likely with his training and family connections he was considered of top-level importance. Rice-Davies once asked Ward if Ivanov was a spy, to which Ward reportedly replied that everyone at the Russian Embassy was.2
Because of exactly who Ivanov was, he was of extra importance to the British Security Service too. Turning this man or having him defect would be an intelligence coup. Since he clearly enjoyed the finer things the capitalist lifestyle afforded him in London, in June 1961, MI5 and MI6 were keen to target the assistant attaché for a ‘honey-trap’, say Knightley and Kennedy. Having tailed Ivanov since his arrival in the country, the intelligence services knew all about his friendship with Ward and that Ward was friends with Bill Astor, a former naval intelligence officer, and Colin Coote, who was an SIS controller in Italy in the 1920s. This is why the MI5 officer who introduced himself as ‘Woods’ met Ward on 8 June 1961.
Ward always maintained that rather than being a spy, he was helping MI5, although the Service itself failed to come to his aid in any way when he was on trial. But Ward’s version of events differs to MI5’s. Ward says he was approached, told that the Service was happy for him to stay friends with Ivanov and asked to contact Woods immediately if anything happened that Ward thought they should know about. When ‘Woods’ gave evidence to Lord Denning, however, the emphasis was that Ward had himself volunteered to report back on Ivanov, but the Service didn’t take up his offer. The difference is subtle but important, say Knightley and Kennedy.3 But how could Denning have known which version was true? Can the intelligence services lie if it’s a matter of national security?
And like all good spy ‘stories’, the plot thickens when you consider that Ward claims Woods asked him what topics interested Ivanov and Ward mentioned that the Russian wanted to know about the timing of the delivery to Germany of nuclear warheads.
At this point, it’s worth remembering that as a trained intelligence officer, Ivanov knew he was being watched and that Ward would likely be approached by British security to check up on him. Ward even told Ivanov he had been asked to meet MI5. And so, since he was a spy, Ivanov would have had the sense to only tell Ward information he wanted fed back to the British. Ward was acting, perhaps unwittingly, as a go-between.4
This naïvety contradicts some of Ward’s other behaviour, however. There’s some suggestion that Ward engineered Ivanov leaving Cliveden with Keeler after the swimming party where she so caught Profumo’s wandering eye. Knightley and Kennedy say Ward asked the Russian to take Keeler back to London, promising to return later for a game of bridge himself. To this end, Ivanov waited at Ward’s flat, although Ward never came. Instead, Ivanov and Keeler found another way to entertain themselves, which may have involved the two having sex, but seems to have involved whisky. Knightley and Kennedy say as a trained spy, Ivanov would have known Keeler was bait and thus avoided taking any risks. What is clear is that after not returning to the flat on Sunday night as he promised, Ward rang Woods first thing on Monday to update him on the weekend. At this point, MI5 might well have realised the ‘honey’ was actually more likely to attract a certain British minister into infidelity!
The investigation and interview methods of those involved in the Ward criminal trial have also come under scrutiny. Over-zealous policing may have created an environment in which people told the authorities what they wanted to hear, fearing the consequences if they didn’t. Keeler said that she was ‘interrogated time after time’ by the police, and that now a civil rights lawyer would call it ‘harassment’.5 Interviewed daily by the police, for a total of twenty-four times, Keeler later said she was forced to choose between her own safety or Ward’s.
In her autobiography, Rice-Davies says that when she was in Holloway, Detective Chief Inspector Herbert and Detective Sergeant Burrows visited her and made it clear that if she helped them, they would help her. Some claim Rice-Davies was only in prison in the first place to encourage her to cooperate with the police. She was apprehended on a minor charge that resulted from accepting a car and driving licence from her boyfriend Rachman. After she was arrested, she was locked in a cell overnight and appeared before magistrates the next morning. Her bail was set at an unobtainable £2,000, and since the court was going into recess, Rice-Davies was remanded in custody for nine more days before her case could be heard. She says she would have done anything to get out because she felt like ‘a cornered animal’.6 Rice-Davies said the policeman made it clear that all they needed from her was confirmation of what Keeler had already said.
Once released, Rice-Davies headed off to Majorca but was again pursued by the police, this time over the alleged theft of a TV, again resulting from paperwork her deceased boyfriend had got her to sign. She was met from her return plane by the police, charged and bailed and her passport was confiscated. Rice-Davies says it was only later that she realised that the theft charge, which was later settled out of court, and the taking of her passport, were simply to make sure she turned up to give evidence against Ward.7
Prostitute Ronny Ricardo seems to have been coerced into giving false statements that were used as evidence against Ward. Under cross-examination during the trial, Ricardo retracted her earlier statements and said she had been threatened that her baby would be taken away and that her younger sister would be taken into care if she did not do as the police asked.
Party politics also affected how the story of the scandal developed and was perceived. And politics is rarely as honourable as we might like it to be. The Labour Party played a pivotal role in bringing Profumo’s affair out into the open, and in capitalising on it. A year after the Profumo scandal, Labour took over the running of the country for the first time in thirteen years.
While at first Harold Wilson had ignored George Wigg’s dossier on Profumo, in the cutthroat business of politics, he later changed his view and used the situation to his advantage. The Opposition focused its attention on the security risks the scandal presented, the talk of spying, rather than sex, scoring far more political points. Was it spin or genuine concern for the country? Were the risks of espionage over-hyped to make the Tories look inept? The Security Service certainly didn’t think there was a significant risk at the time, not least because, as Andrew harshly says in Defence of the Realm, it realised that Ivanov would have known that Keeler had no useful information, that she was ‘vacuous and untruthful’ and would not have slept with her for that reason.8
However, Ivanov himself could barely be trusted; he was, after all, a spy, trained in the art of deception. Was he using Keeler and Ward without them even knowing? Could Keeler have picked up information from Profumo and passed it on unwittingly? There would certainly have been a chance that could happen. Ivanov was by trade a liar. He denied having sex with Keeler in the Daily Mail, despite previously claiming they had sex twice.9 Can you trust the word of a professional fraud?
Ward claimed he was in touch with MI5, that rather than being a Russian spy he helped the government keep tabs on Profumo and Ivanov’s relationship and that he had helped during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Was he exaggerating, lying or misguided? The British did play a mediator role between Russian and America, and Ivanov corroborates that Ward was involved in passing messages from Russia to the Foreign Office via Sir Godfrey Nicholson.10 Ward loved gossip but he was also well-connected, having provided his osteopathy service to the great and good, and having sketched many a VIP. Undoubtedly, he had shared many confidences with his influential patients and subjects, so why was Ward’s word that he was not a pimp not good enough for the police and judge now?
Getting to the bottom of the matter is not helped by the government’s stonewalling of more recent enquiries. Under the Public Records Act (PRA), in 1993, a full thirty years after the Denning Report was first published, the files from the official judicial inquiry were to be opened to the public or destroyed. At that point, Cabinet Secretary Sir Robin Butler said it would be wrong to destroy them, as ‘they reflect an extraordinary episode and evoke the character of the 1960s in a very powerful way’ and that ‘historians would judge us harshly for such destruction’. But he also argued they should remain secret for several decades yet. The then Prime Minister John Major thus made the decision that the files would remain closed to the public until 2048.
In 2015, the Cabinet Office reluctantly agreed with the independent body the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives (ACNRA) to transfer twenty-five boxes of Denning Inquiry files for safekeeping to the National Archives. Established by the 1958 PRA, ACNRA advises the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on issues relating to access to public records and represents the public interest in deciding what records should be open or closed. According to minutes of advisory council meetings obtained by the BBC under freedom of information (FOI), the Cabinet Office had initially tried unsuccessfully to argue that the papers were too sensitive to be taken away from its own direct control. It maintained some of the material affected national security. Now with the National Archives however, out of these twenty-five boxes, twenty-three remain closed to the public, while the other two, which contained material already in the public domain, such as press cuttings, are available for viewing.
Documents obtained under the FOI Act and reported by the BBC in 2020 showed the identity of some of those who gave evidence to Lord Denning has ‘never been known to the public’ and that in 2014, at least, some of those people were still alive. It has also been argued that since Denning heard the evidence on the specific understanding that it would never be published, it is unfair to those who gave it under those terms for it not to remain confidential. Art historian and TV presenter Bendor Grosvenor was quoted as saying he has ‘never experienced such a concerted effort to withhold papers’ and that ‘It was hard to escape the conclusion there was something of a cover-up going on.’
The National Archives refused a more recent BBC FOI request for a release of Denning Inquiry evidence based on the grounds that even if witnesses themselves are now dead, ‘the highly personal nature of the information’ could cause damage and distress to their families. The Information Commissioner upheld the FOI refusal.11 Unfortunately, if the facts are kept locked away, it’s easier and necessary to guess about those events instead.
It’s hard to believe that even in 2023 the full Profumo story remains untold. Was everyone lying? After all, their reputations, livelihoods and perhaps their safety were at stake, and even that of the government.
It all goes to show that what we need most from our police, our legal system, our press and – above all – from our politicians is honesty.
Conclusion
As I said at the beginning of this book, the events that led up to, occurred during and were set into motion because of the Profumo Affair are complex. Many strands of the story run in parallel, while others veer off into dead ends. With livelihoods, careers, marriages, personal safety and national stability at stake, no risk and no lie were too great not to take or try.
It is the story of a privileged and educated married man who should have known far better than to chase young girls. When he was caught, he took the easy way out, and lied, hoping the affair could be brushed aside. We also have a young working-class girl enjoying what life can offer, getting by using what society has afforded her, which is not much more than her youth and good looks. Around this brief romance sit many friends and acquaintances that will feel the repercussions of poor decisions and selfishness. Some may have deserved their punishments, others did not.
The Profumo Affair was responsible for at least one death, several likely miscarriages of justice, the labelling of young girls as ‘whores’, the ruined reputations of many, the fall from grace of several politicians and perhaps even a change in government. Why was this short-lived romance so impactful?
The timing of the events is one important reason. The country was recovering from the world wars but involved in the Cold War. Communism, and communist spies, were a real and perceived threat to our safety and nuclear weapons were feared.
Society was also changing both physically and in its behaviour. While attitudes to class, gender and race needed to modernise, the transition was difficult. Many were worried that abandoning traditional values would lead to moral collapse. At the same time, to battle for audiences lost to TV, the press began a new era of chequebook journalism, feeding from the insecurities many held.
But at the heart of the scandal is how we invest in those people and institutions we trust. We expect our family, friends, partners, colleagues and leaders to be honest. We expect our government, our media and our legal system to be transparent and just. When behaviour falls short of our ideals, we are outraged and call for punishment.
The Profumo Affair caused moral outrage and was evidence to some that society was changing but for the worse. It was coupled with the fear that promiscuous lifestyles could put our personal lives and national safety in danger. The British public wanted to trust those it held up as heroes.
What could have been done to stop events spiralling out of control in the way that they did? The obvious answer would be for Profumo to have been faithful to his wife, and if he found that he could not do so, to have least been honest about it. Because he persisted in lying, he found that he had to risk his rank by lying to the House of Commons. An earlier confession could have saved his skin, and certainly that of others.
His colleagues could also have insisted he step aside, as it’s likely many suspected or even knew the rumours were true. It was a time to stop protecting your own and stand up for what is right.
