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On This Day: Britons gripped by Profumo Affair 50 years ago
More than 100,000 copies of what was described by the Daily Telegraph as 'the raciest and most readable Blue Book ever published' were sold within 24 hours
SEPTEMBER 25, 1963: Britons rushed to buy a copy of the Denning Report into the Profumo Affair – the steamiest political scandal the country had ever seen - on this day 50 years ago.
More than 100,000 copies of what was described by the Daily Telegraph as 'the raciest and most readable Blue Book ever published' were sold within 24 hours.
A British Pathé newsreel filmed thousands of people queuing to buy the report into the affair between a Tory minister and a showgirl mistress of an alleged Soviet spy.
But, like many public inquiries, Judge Lord Denning’s account was accused of being a whitewash after it excused the authorities of any wrongdoing.
Yet, such was the outcry over the affair, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was forced to resign a month later – and the Tories were voted out of office the following year.
The public was particularly appalled that John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, lied to Parliament about his fling with Christine Keeler, a woman 27 years his junior.
The married Old Harrovian, who served in a Cabinet exclusively composed of former public schoolboys, eventually admitted misleading MPs and resigned.
But the damage was done and the subsequent report investigating the affair failed to reassure Britons that there had been 'no lowering of public standards'.
Until then, trust in politcians had been relatively high – and the scandal marked a permanent sea change in public attitudes.
Traditional deference to the upper classes had also been further eroded by the affair and added more momentum to a 1960s social revolution that was already underway.
Indeed, after the 1964 election of Labour’s Harold Wilson, a Yorkshire grammar schoolboy, few believed another public schoolboy would ever again be PM.
For the next 33 years – until Tony Blair’s election - both Labour and Tory premiers were all educated at state schools.
The Profumo Affair also emblematic of the changing attitudes towards newly exposed sexual promiscuity and the Victorian probity that the upper classes claimed to uphold.
Miss Keeler’s affair with Profumo – while also dating Soviet naval attaché Yevgeny and drug dealer Johnny Edegcombe – was seen by many as simple public titillation.
Certainly, in an era when censorship ensured novels such as DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover were banned, the Denning Report was sensational as it could get.
It later emerged that the Profumo met Miss Keeler at a party arranged by Dr Stephen Ward, who was later prosecuted for living off the immoral earnings of prostitution.
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The minister had chased the model around the swimming pool at Cliveden – the aristricrtic manor owned by Lord Astor - while she was wearing nothing but a towel.
It ensured that the impossibly glamorous Miss Keeler, who was later photographed seductively posing on iconic 1960s furniture, became a popular pin-up girl.
Yet the political element of the scandal was also red hot: Labour MPs, seeking a way to destabilise the Government, said the affair might endanger national security.
During interviews, Miss Keeler referred to 'nuclear payloads' – a term not generally known by members of the public.
It was feared that she may have passed on British secrets to the country’s Cold War enemy.
However, Miss Keeler, who is now aged 71 and lives in sheltered accommodation in South London, has always denied this.
Profumo, who died in 2006, devoted the rest of his life to rehabilitating his reputation through charity work.
