On December 14, 1962, Johnny Edgecombe , a 30-year-old jazz promoter who had been born in Antigua and Barbuda, got out of a taxi in the London neighborhood of Marylebone and headed for the door of the apartment where his ex-partner Christine Keeler lived. The 20-year-old refused to open for him. Edgecombe sprang into action: he drew a revolver and fired several shots at the door . Neighbors called the police, who took the hot-headed Johnny away.

It was an incident of sexist violence that could hardly occupy a box on a police page for those years. However, that episode was the flight of the butterfly that led, a few months later, to a political scandal of enormous proportions , with sexual connotations in the midst of the Cold War, which ended the career of a minister and caused the fall of the Conservative government. by Harold Macmillan.

the previous months

The England of the early 1960s was still very modest in its customs and the Conservatives were in tune. They ruled from 1951, when Winston Churchill regained power. The leader of the Second War left his position in the hands of Anthony Eden, who was barely able to govern a year and a half and left his post in 1957 , after the Suez Canal crisis. Macmillan became prime minister and retained his post by beating Labor in 1959 .

The government began to falter when it emerged that an official working for the naval attache at the British embassy in Moscow turned out to be a Soviet spy . John Vassall was gay and was blackmailed by the KGB after being photographed in an intimate situation. Homosexuality was still a crime in the UK. Through extortion, he passed information on naval technology. He was discovered and arrested in September 1962 : the case caused a stir.

By this time one of the stars of Macmillan's cabinet was the Defense Minister, who was being talked about as a possible leader of the Conservatives. John Profumo was of Italian descent and had been in charge of him since 1960 . By the time the Vassall case broke, several months had passed since the end of his relationship with a 19-year-old girl, which was now being disputed by two men from the jazz scene: singer Lucky Gordon and promoter Johnny Edgecombe. The seed of a scandal big enough to cover up Vassall's arrest was germinating.

The model, the doctor and the minister

Christine Keeler had come to London from the suburb of Uxbridge in 1957. Her father had abandoned her and her mother. She began working as a model in a clothing store and then as a waitress in a restaurant, where she met Percy Murray, the owner of a cabaret, who hired her to dance topless. It was at Murray's cabaret that Keeler crossed paths with the central protagonist of the Profumo affair . In the premises located in Soho , the meeting took place that would lead to the greatest political scandal of the 20th century in Great Britain: Keeler was introduced to Stephen Ward .

An osteopathic physician, Ward became a celebrity in aristocratic circles after World War II . He made a distinguished portfolio of clients and also stood out as a draftsman when it came to making freehand portraits. One of the men of power with whom he befriended was William Waldorf Astor, a member of a prominent family and conservative politician. Lord Astor took charge of Cliveden , the family mansion located on the outskirts of London on a 150-hectare estate. In the early 1960s, he was renting a house on the estate from Ward .

Keeler and Ward hit it off at Murray's cabaret and the doctor took the young woman, who was 30 years older, to live in her apartment . She would later say that it was a "brother and sister" relationship and that there was no sex between them. Ward had had a brief marriage and was single. The young Christine began to frequent the doctor's circles and that is how on July 8, 1961 they both went to a party in Cliveden and she met Profumo .

The minister, born in 1915, was with his wife, actress Valerie Hobson. Astor introduced them to his tenant and her friend and a few days later the relationship between Keeler and Profumo began, which had as a meeting place the apartment that she lived with Ward : the doctor acted as liaison, which would cement the suspicion that his affectionate relationship with Keeler was nothing more than the facade of a pimp .

More than half a century later, it is still unclear when the relationship between the minister and his mistress ended, which is key because of the subsequent political implications. Keeler would say that the meetings lasted until the end of 1961. But in August the secret services warned Profumo not to get involved with Ward so much , because she might interfere in something more serious.

The Naval Attaché

An actor had entered the scene who made the matter more worrying than an affair with a 19-year-old girl. Ward had stated his intention to go to Moscow to portray Soviet leaders , after having drawn members of the Royal Family. One of his friends and patients, the editor of The Daily Telegraph, introduced him to the naval attache at the Soviet embassy, ​​with whom he befriended. Yevgeni Ivanov was suspected of being a spy and MI5 sensed that he might want to defect . So the British services contacted Ward and used him as a link to the spy. Ivanov was at Cliveden the night Profumo and Keeler met . He also started a relationship with the young woman.

It is not clear that British espionage knew of Profumo's relationship with Keeler, but MI5 alerted the official that Ward could help in a possible defection of Ivanov and that he should keep his distance . The minister had planned an appointment with Keeler and, after her warning, he postponed it through a letter in which he begins by saying "Honey" . That letter was going to come back to him like a boomerang.

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At the height of the Cold War, and while John Vassall was spying for the Russians under extortion, it happened that a 19-year-old girl was the lover of the Minister of War of the main ally of the United States; and at the same time she had a relationship with the naval attache of the USSR whom she saw as a spy and eventual deserter. He was an explosive cocktail .

The truth is that Ivanov did not defect and maintained a relationship of several months with Keeler, which could have coincided in a few weeks with the one she had with Profumo, or during the entire second half of 1961. The great suspicion of British espionage would happen if Profumo had been unfaithful to his lover and if the candid Keeler had mentioned it to Ivanov afterwards.

The scandal takes shape

Everything seemed to calm down as the weeks passed, with no major news apart from the confirmation that Profumo had cut ties with Keeler and that Ivanov also stopped seeing the young woman. By 1962, Ward had brought a friend of Christine's at the cabaret into his circle. Her name was Mandy Rice-Davies and she was 17 years old, so on top of everything she was a minor. Through Keeler, Rice-Davies became the mistress of a former partner of Christine's , another good friend of Ward's: real estate mogul Peter Rachman . Of Polish origin, Rachman amassed a fortune from rentals in Notting Hill. His way of approaching the business was so particular that the Oxford Dictionary coined the term "rachmanism" (rachmanism) to define the intimidation of owners towards tenants.

Rachman died in November 1962. His death brought Keeler and Rice-Davies very close, because it coincided with another issue. If Christine was consoling her friend for the death of the tycoon (who had installed her in the house where she had previously located Keeler), Mandy was there to support her friend in a difficult moment in her love life. . Keeler had started dating Jamaican jazz singer Lucky Gordon and later Johnny Edgecombe . Tensions were rising. Johnny tangled with Lucky and slashed his face with a razor. Within a few weeks, Keeler decided to end Edgecombe. He was with Mandy in Ward's apartment when Johnny stormed over and wouldn't open the door. The promoter took a gun out of his pocket and started shooting.

a matter of state

Police arrested Edgecombe for attempted murder. The press described Keeler as a "model" and Rice-Davies as an "actress." The fact led to a strong dispute between Christine and Ward. The apartment was in his name and he was a well-known person. The bond between them cracked and she began talking to various people about her relationship with Ward .

On Christmas Eve, Keeler went to a nightclub. There she crossed paths with an old acquaintance of Ward's, Labor MP John Lewis . She did not know that both men were estranged. Lewis did not forgive the osteopath for having introduced a woman to a partner of his, who broke the bond to start a lesbian relationship. So when Keeler warmed up to him and named Profumo and Ivanov, at a time when Vassall's espionage was still being discussed, Lewis tasted revenge on him. He contacted another Labor MP, Baron Wigg, who was feuding with Profumo , who launched an investigation on his behalf.

The Soviets realized that something big was about to explode and decided to do some damage control: they took Ivanov out of the country . Already in Moscow, while the scandal devoured Profumo and the Macmillan government, Ivanov was abandoned by his wife and fell into alcoholism.

Early in 1963, Keeler sold her story to the Sunday Pictorial, to which he also gave a copy of Profumo's letter in which the minister postponed a meeting with her and which was evidence of her relationship. In between, she failed to come to terms with the News of the World, which proceeded to alert Ward and Lord Astor of what was about to happen. The doctor threatened the other tabloid with a lawsuit and the publication was stopped , while Lord Astor evicted him from Cliveden. Keeler's relationship with Profumo was already an open secret.

In March, she did not appear to testify at Edgecombe's trial . She had gone to Spain. Without her testimony in court, the jazz promoter was sentenced to seven years in prison. The following week, the satirical magazine Private Eye published the first account of the affair, but with the names changed from Keeler, Profumo, Ward and Ivanov.

The fall of Profumo and the trial

Meanwhile, Baron Wigg advanced with his private investigation, of which he notified the new Labor leader, Harold Wilson. Keeler's absence from Edgecombe's trial precipitated political action . Wigg demanded in Parliament that the Home Secretary confirm or deny whether a senior member of the government (he did not name Profumo, who was not present) was involved in the Edgecombe shooting incident. The minister declined to comment .

The next day, Profumo spoke before Parliament. He admitted knowing Keeler and Ward, that he hadn't seen her in over a year, and that he had run into Ivanov a couple of times. He denied having had "an improper relationship" with the young woman . Immediately afterwards, from Madrid, Keeler stated that she was a friend of the minister and his wife was his and that she had not gone to testify at Edgecombe's trial because she was confused with the dates. Who spoke later was Ward, in a television interview, in which she ratified what Profumo had said.

However, the police launched an investigation and began interviewing Ward's friends and patients. And Keeler, who contradicted herself and confirmed her affair with Profumo . Mandy Rice-Davies was pulled over for a traffic violation and she spent eight days in jail before she agreed to testify against Ward.

The doctor saw her world come crashing down and, at the urging of the spiteful John Lewis, a pimping accusation took shape. He tried to seek help from the Conservative government and told a secretary to the Prime Minister that he knew Profumo had lied about Keeler . At the end of May, Profumo confessed his affair to his wife and, pressured by Macmillan, tendered his resignation . He also gave up his seat in Parliament. The press was merciless: the conservatives were on the bottom of his popularity. The defense minister had cheated on his wife with a young woman who might be his daughter and lied about his relationship when she came to light. And on top of that there was a third party who was a Soviet military man. So much for the morals of the time and the paranoia of the Cold War.

In July, the trial began against Ward, who was considered the scapegoat for the scandal, the one through which politicians whitewashed his image. He had no friends who would testify in his favor, in a process in which the prosecutor defined him as representative of "the depths of lasciviousness and depravity." The allegation was devastating and Ward panicked. Still on parole, he locked himself in his apartment on the night of July 30; he wrote letters in which he reaffirmed his innocence and took a bottle of pills. The judge passed sentence the next day: Ward was guilty of sexually exploiting Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies . They went looking for him and found him dying. He died on August 3, 1963. His remains were cremated.

The next years

In October the Macmillan government fell and a year later Harold Wilson's Labor won the elections. Profumo never spoke publicly about the case. His wife forgave him and he dedicated himself to social assistance work, which earned him recognition. Over the years, he was readmitted to public life and died in 2006.

Christine Keeler spent four months in prison for lying about an assault by Lucky Gordon. She had two marriages and two children and years later she gave interviews about the scandal , on the occasion of the 1989 film Scandal, which recreates the case. She died in 2017. Three years earlier Mandy Rice-Davies had passed away. Both were still alive when Stephen Ward, Andrew Lloyd-Webber's 2013 musical about the osteopath, was released, which features them as characters alongside Profumo, his wife, and Lucky Gordon.

The Profumo affair was summed up in a photo that Christine took in May 1963, when the newspapers were talking about nothing else. She walked into Lewis Morley's studio, took off her clothes and posed nude sitting upside down on a chair in a series of photos . In the best known of hers, in which she looks directly at the camera, her arms and back prevent her from being frontally nude, as in all the others, in an image of great sensuality. It was not long before Mary Quant imposed the miniskirt and a musical revolution took shape in the Abbey Road studios, where the Beatles made their first recordings. The Conservative era was behind us, the 60s were beginning with a bang in the UK. Keeler and Morley didn't know it, but Swinging London was born .