[BITList] Profumo at 100

[John Feltham]

Begin forwarded message:




8 January 2015: our new update adds biographies of 226 men and women who died in the year 2011

January 2015 update:  biographies of 226 men and women who died in the year 2011 http://global.oup.com/oxforddnb/info/freeodnb/shelves/jan2015/

How are people chosen for January’s update? David Cannadine explains (video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El2lTQiKaoU

Churchill biographies, 50 years after Sir Winston’s death http://global.oup.com/oxforddnb/info/freeodnb/shelves/churchill/

Our new podcast: the remarkable story of Christina Carpenter, C14th ‘double’ anchorite https://global.oup.com/oxforddnb/info/freeodnb/pod/



========================================================================



To read this Life of the Day complete with a picture of the subject,
visit http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/lotw/2015-01-30



Profumo,  John Dennis  [Jack]  (1915-2006), politician and social worker, was born on 30 January 1915 at 28 Basil Street, Kensington, the second son (the elder had died in infancy) and fourth of five children of Albert Peter Anthony Profumo (1879-1940), barrister, and fourth Baron Profumo of the kingdom of Italy, and his wife, Martha Thom, nee Walker, an actress and dancer from Edinburgh. The Profumo family was Sardinian by origin, the barony having been bestowed on Antonio Profumo in 1843 by the king of Sardinia. It became an Italian barony in 1903. Antonio's grandson Joseph, the third baron, was educated in England and settled in London having married an Englishwoman. In 1885 he and his four children became British subjects. He had been a founder in 1877 of the Provident Life Association, which became the basis of a substantial family fortune. John Profumo succeeded his father as fifth Baron Profumo of the kingdom of Italy in 1940.

Early life

John Profumo-known throughout his life as Jack-began his education at Mr Gibbs's School in Sloane Street, London, before going to preparatory school at Wellington House, Westgate-on-Sea, Kent, and thence in 1928 to Harrow School. He was not academically distinguished but made a mark on the rugby field, in the officer training corps (which he left in the rank of sergeant), and in amateur dramatics and cinematography: while still at school he built his own cinema in the converted laundry of his family's country house in Warwickshire. In 1933 he went to Brasenose College, Oxford, to read law, but this study came second to a very active sporting and social life; he won half-blues for polo, point-to-point riding, and pole-vaulting. He also became something of a ladies' man, an interest that would have ramifications later on. He became well-known as a well-dressed, well-groomed, and debonair socialite. In the long vacation before his final year at Oxford he took an extensive tour of Russia, China, and the Far East, returning via America, which greatly opened up his mind and seems to have stimulated an interest in politics. It did nothing to improve his academic record, and in 1936 he left Oxford with a pass degree. He had become active in the Conservative Party during his final year at Oxford, and conceived an ambition to enter the House of Commons; both his father and grandfather had tried and failed. He spent three months in early 1937 as an observer at the League of Nations in Geneva, and then became closely involved with William Waldorf (Bill) Astor's constituency Conservative association in Fulham. Astor (who later succeeded his father as third Viscount Astor, in 1952) became Profumo's patron, and by the end of 1937 Profumo was the youngest man on the Conservative Party's list of approved candidates. He soon became chairman of the East Fulham Conservative Association and head of the Warwickshire Junior Imperial League, the forerunner of the Young Conservatives. In March 1939 he was adopted as prospective candidate for Kettering in Northamptonshire, a safe Conservative seat whose MP, J. F. Eastwood, had chosen not to fight the next election, due within a year. That June he joined the Northamptonshire yeomanry, part of the 20th light armoured brigade, as a territorial.

War service

The outbreak of the Second World War meant the indefinite postponement of a general election, and Eastwood decided to resign at once. Profumo felt his military duties should take precedence over political ones, but was summoned to Downing Street and implored by Neville Chamberlain to carry on. It was therefore in uniform that he fought a by-election on 6 March 1940. Labour did not contest the poll, and Profumo won by 11,298 votes on a small turnout to become the youngest MP in the House of Commons. His first vote in the house was on 8 May, when with considerable courage he was one of the thirty-three Conservative MPs who sided against Chamberlain in the Norway debate and brought an end to his administration.

Stationed in England as a general staff officer, Profumo was able to attend the house reasonably regularly until the autumn of 1942, when he went to north Africa and took part in the battle for Tunis. He then participated in the invasion of Sicily and fought through Italy, including at Monte Cassino, specializing in liaison with the RAF and United States Army Air Force on Field Marshal Lord Alexander's staff. He was mentioned in dispatches. He returned to London in the autumn of 1944 after the fall of Rome, by special permission to attend a Commons debate on demobilization arrangements. He was awarded a military OBE in December 1944 and the following month was awarded the bronze star by the United States for his part in planning operations in Italy. His own demobilization was delayed, and he had the further frustration of losing Kettering in the Labour landslide of July 1945. However, that October he was promoted brigadier and offered the post of second-in-command of the British military mission in the Far East, based in Tokyo. In his eight months there he worked closely with the supreme commander of allied forces in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur.

Return to politics

Once demobilized in the autumn of 1946 Profumo sought to resume a political career. He remained a candidate for Kettering, turning down at least one safe seat offered him. He worked for Conservative central office as the party's first broadcasting liaison officer, with a brief to monitor the BBC for signs of bias. A big boundaries change for parliamentary seats made it easier for him to extricate himself from Kettering, and in late 1948 he became the candidate for the safe seat of Stratford upon Avon. He got to know and be liked by Winston Churchill, which proved useful in his subsequent career; and he began to court the celebrated film actress (Babette Louisa) Valerie Hobson  (1917-1998), whose marriage to the producer Anthony Havelock-Allan was disintegrating. In February 1950 he won Stratford upon Avon, but was in opposition until the Conservatives' victory in October 1951. He had to wait another year for office, being appointed parliamentary under-secretary at the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation in November 1952. British aviation was in the doldrums at this stage and Profumo brought a typical burst of showmanship to his role, acting for instance as steward to the crew of a BEA Viscount in a London to New Zealand air race. Shortly after his return, in December 1953, he collapsed in the House of Commons with a burst appendix and was off duties for three months. During his convalescence he was visited often by Valerie Hobson, and on 31 December 1954 they were married at St Columba's, Pont Street, London. In 1955 they had their only child, David, later a successful journalist and author.

Although Profumo and his wife (who retired from acting almost immediately) were soon established as one of the most glittering couples in London society, his political career proceeded slowly. He moved sideways to become parliamentary under-secretary for the colonies in 1957, then for foreign affairs in 1958, being promoted to minister of state at the Foreign Office in 1959. In all three roles he and his wife spent much time in extensive foreign travel. In 1960 Harold Macmillan appointed him secretary of state for war, a senior post outside the cabinet. He was sworn of the privy council. In this post he had some notable challenges. He had to oversee the abolition of national service and the return to an all-regular army. There would later be criticism that he was over-promoted and unequal to the demands of this post; but he was initially popular with the army, not least because of his war record and his considerable charm.

The Profumo scandal

The catastrophe of Profumo's political career was set in train on the evening of Saturday 8 July 1961 when, as a guest at Lord Astor's house at Cliveden in Buckinghamshire, he came across a naked Christine Keeler in the swimming pool after dinner. Keeler, an occasional prostitute, was the guest of Stephen Ward, an osteopath, who rented a cottage on Astor's estate. Also of the party was the Soviet naval attache, Captain Yevgeny Ivanov. The next day Profumo met Keeler again and asked for her telephone number. An affair began quickly, but was over within a month. It finished because Ward, who was known to be close to Ivanov, had been boasting of the secretary of state for war's friendship. Profumo had been warned by Sir Norman Brook, the cabinet secretary, to steer clear of Ward and his circle. He dropped Keeler at once (though he made the mistake of doing so in writing, in a letter beginning 'Darling'), fearing the security services must know about their affair. Sadly, he could not rely on Keeler's discretion. One of her other inamorati, an Antiguan called Johnny Edgecombe, fired shots at Keeler in a lover's tiff in December 1962, and in the aftermath of this incident Keeler spoke to numerous people (including policemen, lawyers, and journalists) about whether what had happened might have an impact on Profumo. No one could imagine why, until Keeler enlightened them. When Edgecombe was put on trial the main witness against him, Keeler, had fled the country, so a minor irruption then became a much reported Fleet Street story. Some in the press and the police suspected that Profumo had spirited her away to avoid his name coming out in court. He had not. But he then acted recklessly. Macmillan had been alerted that there were rumours of Profumo's having had an affair with Keeler. Profumo then denied these to Tim Bligh, Macmillan's private secretary, Martin Redmayne, the chief whip, and Sir John Hobson, the attorney-general. It was decided to bother Macmillan no further with the matter. Profumo also instructed his solicitors to pursue for libel any publication that repeated the suggestions. However, on 21 March 1963, and under parliamentary privilege, the Labour MP George Wigg invited the home secretary to deny the rumours about Profumo and Keeler. The Ivanov connection was supposedly underpinning the question-this was the height of the cold war-but the Conservative government had lost some by-elections, was deemed to be exhausted and in trouble, and there had been another minor spy scandal involving William Vassall, a clerk at the Admiralty, the previous year, that had led to a ministerial resignation. Labour smelled political advantage and so pursued Profumo.

Redmayne immediately told Profumo that he must make a public denial along the lines of those already made privately. Profumo took a sleeping pill and went to bed. He was awoken in a drugged state at 3 a.m. and brought to the House of Commons, where several of his senior colleagues had decided a denial must be issued without delay in an attempt to ward off scandal. One of them, Iain Macleod, the leader of the house, said to Profumo: 'Look, Jack, the basic question is, "Did you fuck her?"'  (Profumo, 181). Profumo continued to deny that he had. William Deedes, the minister without portfolio and a future editor of the Daily Telegraph, drafted a statement that Profumo agreed to deliver the next morning in the Commons. Profumo later told his son that 'I felt I couldn't tell the truth at that stage ... it would have been beyond my political ability to own up to them-having got that far telling lies'  (ibid., 182). Deedes, thirty years after the events, compared what had happened with Star Chamber. Thus it was that Profumo attended the house the next day and, having told the truth that he had had nothing to do with Keeler's disappearance, and had only seen Ivanov twice, and socially, then told the blatant lie-that there had been 'no impropriety whatever' in his relationship with Keeler-that would end his career and cement one of the most celebrated scandals in British political history.

The rumours would not go away. Profumo had his lawyers issue writs against two European magazines that continued to publicize them. A further complication was that the police were compiling a case against Stephen Ward for living off immoral earnings. Ward asked to see Bligh at Downing Street, claiming that he had been covering up for Profumo over certain security aspects of the case. On 29 May Macmillan finally acceded to a demand that he initiate an inquiry into the matter, and charged the lord chancellor, Lord Dilhorne, to conduct it.

On 31 May the Profumos left for a holiday in Venice, Profumo having maintained to Dilhorne before his departure that he was sticking to his story. However, once in Venice he confessed to his wife that he had had an affair with Keeler. She advised him to return home at once and own up, which he did. In his letter of resignation from the government to Macmillan on 4 June he admitted his lie, apologized, and said he had lied 'to protect, as I thought, my wife and family'  (Profumo, 188). Too ashamed to ask for an audience of the queen to return his seals of office, he had them sent to Buckingham Palace by courier. He also resigned from the House of Commons. Various moral arbiters at Westminster and in Fleet Street, notably Lord Hailsham, in an over-emotional television appearance and an interview with The Times newspaper, got on their moral high horses, and Britain became convulsed by spasms of prurience and hypocrisy and the centre, for a time, of the world's focus. On 20 June the House of Commons formally censured Profumo, three days after a debate on the government's handling of the issue. In the course of that Macmillan had been turned on memorably by one of his backbenchers, Nigel Birch, who during a devastating attack on the prime minister quoted the lines 'never glad, confident morning again' from the poem The Lost Leader by Robert Browning. Macmillan did not recover, and resigned four months later. Profumo requested that he be allowed to resign from the privy council, and his resignation was accepted. Stephen Ward committed suicide in August 1963. An official report by Lord Denning was published in September, which exonerated the security service and refuted claims of any security breach. It sold 90,000 copies on the day of publication. Of Profumo, Denning said: 'His disgrace was complete'  (The Times, 11 March 2006).

Redemption

The remaining forty-three years of Profumo's life became, however, an epic of redemption. In the immediate aftermath he and his family retired to the country. After a few months of reflection and comparative isolation, and at the suggestion of a friend, the dowager marchioness of Reading, he rang Toynbee Hall in London's East End and offered his services as a volunteer. Named after the Victorian social reformer Arnold Toynbee, the hall had been founded in 1884 by a clergyman, Samuel Barnett, as the first of the university settlements, in which students were given subsidized lodgings in return for help with the local poor. It was now short of funds. When Profumo joined the band of helpers in April 1964 the worldwide publicity put Toynbee back on the map. He did a series of menial tasks, such as helping with the laundry and working in the kitchens. He danced with old ladies at tea parties and comforted meths drinkers. Conscious of his disgrace he kept a low profile even within the charity. He went in every day and soon developed a genuine affection for the place and for the East End. He slowly reintegrated himself into his former milieu too, made easier by the fact that many political friends stood by him, and that the royal family also took a lead in inviting him and his wife to social occasions.

Having established himself at Toynbee, Profumo used his contacts and experience to cause the charity to grow and to solicit money. The charity was often in the news, either because of Profumo's activities there, or because of the famous names from politics, society, and show business whom he managed to attract to visit it. In 1968 the government invited him to join the board of Grendon Underwood psychiatric prison in Buckinghamshire, which was taken as a mark of his official rehabilitation. He served until 1975. His success in securing a visit by the queen to Toynbee Hall in 1971 to open a new building there set the seal on his redemption. He was appointed CBE for services to charity in 1975. He rose through the ranks at Toynbee to become first chairman, from 1982 to 1985, and then president until his death in 2006. He was made an honorary life member in 2001, and in the same year was made an honorary fellow of Queen Mary College, University of London. Even in his seventies he was spending several days a week there. Over the four decades of his association with the charity its clients changed from the largely elderly poor and down-and-outs to impoverished immigrants, notably Bangladeshis. Profumo steered the charity successfully through the evolutionary process needed to cope with such changes, and never relaxed in looking for new volunteers or new sources of income. One of his fellow volunteers said: 'Everybody here worships him. We think he's a bloody saint'  (Daily Telegraph, 11 March 2006). He and his family were distressed when, in 1989, his rehabilitation secure and his reputation restored, a feature film was made of the scandal, dragging the business up yet again.

Profumo's wife engaged in her own considerable charitable work, and he was profoundly affected by her death in 1998. He was close to his son and his son's family, and remained gregarious; but in his eighties his health began to fail. He had a series of minor strokes and endured increasing difficulties with his mobility. He never spoke in public of the events of 1963, and was reticent about them even with his son, who published a memoir of him and Valerie Profumo shortly after Profumo's death. He could have commanded a sizeable sum in return for an autobiography or even an interview at any time after 1963, but chose never to seek to justify himself or his conduct. His decades of devoted charitable work were the only statement he had to make, and were often cited as an example to other politicans who paid less of a price for far worse behaviour. He maintained an immaculate dignity in what he called 'my personal desire for privacy'  (The Times, 18 March 2006).

Of just short of average height and with a receding hairline from an early age, Profumo was distinguished by his considerable courtesy and charm. He adored the company of women, but also enjoyed fishing and gardening. He had a natural line in self-deprecation, was generous and blessed with a well-developed sense of humour. Margaret Thatcher described him as 'one of our national heroes'  (Daily Telegraph, 11 March 2006). It would have been hard to imagine, when he left politics in abject disgrace in 1963, that a Conservative prime minister would ever refer to him in such terms. Not long before he died he told his son: 'You know, I have enjoyed my life!'  (Profumo, 5). Yet his friend Bishop Jim Thompson, with whom he had worked closely in the East End, said that 'No-one judges Jack Profumo more harshly than he does himself. He says he has never known a day since it happened when he has not felt real shame'  (The Guardian, 11 March 2006).

Profumo died on 9 March 2006 in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, from pneumonia in the aftermath of a stroke. He was cremated after a funeral at St Paul's, Knightsbridge, on 20 March 2006. He was survived by his son, David Profumo, and his stepson by Valerie Hobson's first marriage, Sir Mark Havelock-Allan.

Simon Heffer 

Sources  D. Profumo, Bringing the house down (2006) + P. Knightley and C. Kennedy, An affair of state: the Profumo case and the framing of Stephen Ward (1987) + The Times (11 March 2006); (15 March 2006); (18 March 2006); (20 March 2006) + Daily Telegraph (11 March 2006) + The Guardian (11 March 2006); (15 March 2006) + The Independent (11 March 2006) + Financial Times (11 March 2006) + Press Association Newsfile (20 March 2006) + WW (2004) + personal knowledge (2010) + private information (2010) + b. cert. + m. cert. + d. cert.
Archives CAC Cam., P. G. Buchan-Hepburn papers + NL Wales, Desmond Donnelly papers
Likenesses  Bassano, vintage print, 1938, NPG · photographs, 1947-71, Getty Images, London, Popperfoto · photographs, 1952-85, Getty Images, London, Hult. Arch. · photographs, 1952-2003, Photoshot, London · W. Stoneman, photograph, 1954, NPG · photographs, 1955-2005, Rex Features, London · Lenare, photograph, 1956, NPG · photographs, 1959-2005, PA Photos, London · J. Sime, photograph, 1960, Hult. Arch., London [see illus.] · photographs, 1960-63, Camera Press, London · Vivienne, photograph, 1960-69, Camera Press, London · photographs, 1960-71, Getty Images, London, AFP · W. Bird, photograph, 1962 · S & G Barratts, photographs, 1962-5, PA Photos, London · S. Mark, photographs, 1989, Camera Press, London · J. Veysey, photographs, 2003, Camera Press, London · D. Wimsett, photographs, 2003-5, Photoshot, London · D. Long, photographs, 2005, Camera Press, London · S. Ward, drawings, NPG · obituary photographs
Wealth at death  £3,015,102: probate, 13 July 2006, CGPLA Eng. & Wales




========================================================================
©    Oxford     University    Press,    2004.    See     legal    notice:
http://www.oup.com/oxforddnb/legal/

We hope you have enjoyed this Life of The Day, but if you do wish to stop
receiving   these   messages,   please   EITHER   send   a   message   to
LISTSERV at WEBBER.UK.HUB.OUP.COM with

signoff ODNBLIFEOFTHEDAY-L

in the body (not the subject line) of the message

OR

send an  email to  epm-oxforddnb at oup.com, asking us  to stop  sending you
these messages.