The Profumo Affair and Stephen Ward
In 1963, the British government, led by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, collapsed in the wake of several scandals. The most notable of these was the Profumo Affair, in which osteopath Stephen Ward played a central role.
Ward was an osteopath and a portrait artist, living at the heart of 1960s fashionable London society. He counted the rich and famous among his clientele, including Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor.
As a successful artist, he was commissioned by the Illustrated London News to produce a series of royal portraits, including of Prince Philip and Princess Margaret.
He regularly hosted parties at his flat, which always included an array of attractive young girls, where many notables from the world of entertainment, politics and the aristocracy could be found.
In 1959, Ward met teenage showgirl, Christine Keeler. By 1961 she was renting a room in his London flat, where she was introduced at Ward’s many society parties. This is how Keeler met, and started relationships with, both John Profumo and Yevgeny Ivanov – often using Ward’s flat as a venue for liaisons.
John Profumo was Secretary of State for War, and a central figure of Macmillan’s government. His affair with Christine Keeler may have remained in the shadows, had it not been for the fact that she was simultaneously seeing Ivanov, a Russian naval attaché and possible KGB agent.
The hedonism and excitement of London in the Sixties was set against the backdrop of the Cold War. Doubleagent George Blake had just been imprisoned for passing top-secret documents to Russia, and there was an atmosphere of suspicion.
In their search for intelligence, the British secret services MI5 and MI6 used Ward to gather information from his famous contacts. They also co-opted him to use Keeler to try and recruit Ward’s friend, Ivanov. The attempt proved unsuccessful, and Ivanov was recalled to Moscow.
It was Ward who brought the affair between Keeler and Profumo to the attention of the intelligence services because, given Keeler’s involvement with a Russian agent, he realised the implications for national security.
When the connection between Profumo, Keeler and Ivanov came to light, Profumo lied to the House of Commons, initially insisting that his relationship with Keeler involved no impropriety.
Eventually, press investigations forced Profumo to admit that he had been romantically entangled with Keeler, and he resigned in June 1963. The scandal shook Macmillan’s government, and in the hope of drawing a line under the whole affair, he initiated an inquiry.
When the findings were published, it stated that there had been no security breaches arising from the link between Profumo and Ivanov. Although the inquiry was widely deemed a ‘whitewash’, it allowed Macmillan a short respite. But the fallout was the final critical blow to a government already hit by scandal and incompetence, and Macmillan resigned in October 1963.
Stephen Ward: The Scapegoat of a Political Scandal
Stephen Ward, however, became the scapegoat for the affair. He was arrested in the period between Profumo’s lie to parliament in March 1963 and his confession in early June.
He was charged with living off ‘immoral earnings’; a charge that many think was concocted from the testimony of pressured witnesses.
Ward was put on trial in an apparent attempt by the establishment to prevent him exposing Profumo as a liar and triggering a scandal.
In an unusual turn, the judge at Ward’s trial directed the jury to convict on the grounds that none of his friends had come forward to support him. MI5 failed to disclose that Ward had been working with them – an intervention that could have made all the difference.
Stephen Ward, stating in a note that he was unable to bear his situation, took an overdose and died the day before sentence could be passed.
The funeral of the socialite once at the peak of the London scene was attended by only six people. One left a card that simply read “To Stephen Ward, Victim of Hypocrisy”.