- More than 50 years after the scandal, there is clamour to release a file
- Andrew Lloyd Webber, who wrote a musical on the affair, leads the cries
- Mandy Rice-Davies, who was involved in the scandal, also agrees
- In the absence of evidence, some linked Prince Philip to Profumo Affair
Revelations: Mandy Rice-Davies, pictured in 1964, was connected with the Profumo scandal. She has called for the secret file to be released
After all, none of the public figures involved were young. All are now either dead or, surely, too old to care. Besides, don’t old roués rather enjoy being reminded of youthful misadventures?
John ‘Jack’ Profumo would be nearing his century now if he hadn’t passed on in 2006; ditto most of the others.
He was 48 and Tory Secretary of State for War when the episode’s pivotal figure, society osteopath Stephen Ward, introduced him to the lissom 19-year-old showgirl and model Christine Keeler, whom he was soon bedding.
Just two weeks ago in the Mail, Samantha Cameron’s stepfather Viscount Astor gave an entertaining and affectionate account of the role his late father, the 3rd Viscount, played in the saga, which began in the summer of 1961 when Profumo was visiting the Astor family seat, Cliveden in Berkshire, and saw Keeler in the swimming pool.
Keeler was staying with Ward, who had the use of a cottage on the estate where he also entertained Soviet Naval attaché Yevgeny Ivanov. Ivanov slept with Keeler, too, probably only once - although it was enough to force Profumo’s resignation.
The fear was that, at the height of the Cold War, careless pillow-talk by the War Minister about nuclear secrets could have been passed by Keeler to the sociable Russian diplomat.
In his article, Lord Astor recorded that at the first night of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new West End musical Stephen Ward, he’d met the other key femme fatale in the story, Mandy Rice-Davies - now a businessman’s wife, Mrs Shauli, 69 - who was Keeler’s friend and said at the time that she’d slept with his father.
He liked her and, for her part, she tells me that she liked him - ‘he’s rather like his father’.
Astor even enjoyed repeating her famous riposte under cross-examination in court when Ward was on trial for living off immoral earnings and she was told that Lord Astor denied sleeping with her. ‘He would, wouldn’t he?’ she said.
It was all so long ago that there is no longer rancour or blame, merely a sense of detached amusement derived from looking back at earth-shattering events from another age. Even the pillow-talk scare about nuclear secrets has been totally discounted.
So who on earth, blessed with such longevity, still needs to be protected, and why?
Last year was the 50th anniversary of Ward’s conviction after a sensational trial lasting seven days.
Scandal: The name of Prince Philip, left in 1963, has been mentioned in connection with the Profumo scandal, which forced the resignation of John Profumo, right in 1962, then Secretary of State for War
Correctly anticipating he would be found guilty of living off ‘immoral earnings’ - or profits from supplying prostitutes - and rather than face prison, the personable osteopath with connections right up the social scale committed suicide, taking an overdose of sleeping tablets the night before the jury brought in their verdict. He died several days later.
The anniversary, plus Lloyd Webber’s new West End musical, which conveys the message that Ward was the victim of a miscarriage of justice, has produced a clamour for all the Profumo Affair papers now to be opened for public inspection, on the grounds that he was wrongly, and perhaps even maliciously, convicted.
The belief is he was set up by an Establishment whose former useful friend had become a problem.
For reasons unknown, this clamour is being firmly resisted. Questions in the House of Lords have repeatedly evinced solemn stone-walling by government ministers.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire, Cabinet Office spokesman in the Lords, talked recently of ‘sensational personal items that would be embarrassing if released’.
Sensational? It’s hardly a word in common usage in the Upper Chamber. Indeed, one answer to a questioning peer puzzled by such secrecy after more than half a century suggested the material might have to remain closed for the lives of the children of whoever is named in the file.
That’s some secret.
Trial: Christine Keeler, who slept with Profumo, was at the centre of the sensational scandal - where it was feared she could have leaked nuclear secrets to Russia
There are six Profumo Affair files in the National Archives at Kew, in South-West London, but only five of them are open for public inspection.
The bulging sixth, file 1/4140, containing the highly-sensitive information, is closed and will remain so until at least the year 2046.
Among the papers it contains are believed to be court documents from the Old Bailey, including certain depositions and witness statements that are likely to include information about people whose names were not brought up publicly during the trial.
Andrew Lloyd Webber believes the contents of the file are ‘explosive’. Why is he so certain?
‘I can only say my source is totally reliable - it couldn’t be more reliable,’ says the composer peer. ‘Of course, the person in question has not released any details to me, but is at a very high level indeed.’
Last summer in the Upper House, Lord Lloyd-Webber - made a Conseravtive peer in 1997 - rose on the red benches to declare: ‘What concerns me is the fact that these files will be closed for a staggering 83 years (and) this gives rise to an awful lot of unhealthy speculation about who might be the individuals named within the files.’
Only last week in Westminster, Business Minister Lord Ahmad refused requests for the secret file to be released, saying it contained sensitive information related to people still living.
Says Lloyd Webber: ‘We could speculate for ever about who and what is in this file, but that is so dangerous. Goodness knows where it could lead.
‘The problem is it makes everyone wonder who on Earth it could be who needs that level of protection for that length of time. I can’t believe that if I’d been involved, someone like me would receive protection like this.’
One name this unhealthy speculation has inevitably - and quite unfairly - thrown up in high places is Prince Philip, who will be 93 in June.
‘That’s precisely what I mean about the dangers of having to speculate when everyone is so fed up with secrecy,’ says Lord Lloyd-Webber.
So could Prince Philip really be mentioned in the secret files? ‘All we know is that Ward and Prince Philip knew each other because he sketched Philip several times,’ says Lord Lloyd-Webber.
‘The other interesting thing is why someone arrived and bought for cash all the Ward pictures of the Royal Family at an exhibition that took place before the trial. No one knows who it was, but the pictures have never been seen since.’
Trial: Mandy Rice-Davies, left, and Christine Keeler, centre, are shown leaving a trial at the Old Bailey
Ward was an enthusiastic and very skilled artist. He knew several members of the Royal Family, including Princess Margaret (who liked racy company), and also did drawings of the Duke and Duchess of Kent and the Earl of Snowdon.
The extent of Prince Philip’s acquaintance with Ward, who was habitually in the company of pretty women, has never been explored, but there is no evidence it was deep.
They did have a close mutual friend, however. This was Philip’s first cousin and close confidant, the louche-living David Mountbatten, 3rd Marquis of Milford Haven.
Mountbatten, who was Philip’s best man when he married the then Princess Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey in 1947, was a prominent figure on the London social scene during the Fifties and Sixties, a regular at high-spirited parties and a familiar figure in the company of Stephen Ward, with whom he shared an interest in pornography.
Unsurprisingly, his closeness to the Queen’s handsome young husband, an ex-naval officer, caused considerable indigestion at the Palace.
Guilty: Society osteopath Stephen Ward took an overdose the night before being found guilty of living on immoral earnings
Twice-married Milford Haven, also a wartime naval officer and decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross, was known to host parties for discreet chums at his flat in Grosvenor Square at which the evening would begin with cards, followed by the arrival of women.
Ward was often among the guests and sometimes brought some of the women. When Milford Haven died from a heart attack in 1970, he was just 50.
Friends of the Royal Family are understandably outraged that Prince Philip’s name should be mentioned as being even possibly linked with such goings on without a shred of evidence.
‘It’s quite wicked,’ says a former Palace aide, ‘and probably the best possible argument for those damned secret files being opened so we can see who really is being protected.’
Crucially, Lloyd Webber has been joined in the battle by the human rights QC Geoffrey Robertson, who is determined to get Ward’s 1963 conviction overturned.
Last year, after discussing the case with Lloyd Webber, he decided to look into it and ended up writing a book, Stephen Ward Was Innocent, OK.
Published last month, a copy has been handed to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) as evidence in preparation for an appeal against Ward’s conviction. But this is only a start.
‘I also applied under the Freedom of Information Act for the secret file, which I believe contains court documents and the transcript of the case, which amazingly is “missing”. I’m certain the full transcript would help prove that Stephen Ward was not guilty,’ says Robertson.
‘I got a letter back rejecting the application on the grounds that there may well be embarrassing details about people who are still alive in the file and to release them would be contrary to the Data Protection Act - a classic example of the Act brought in to protect people being misused yet again to suppress important information.’
He has asked for this decision to be reviewed, saying the Data Protection Act was not meant to be used for this kind of cover up.
Fears: Mandy Rice-Davies, left with Christine Keeler, has said 'someone rather special' could be mentioned in the file
But what of secret file 1/4140? ‘We do have investigative powers under Section 17 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 which allow us any material we think we need in the course of the review of a case,’ Hawkins declares meaningfully.
Meanwhile, Mandy Rice-Davies, a mere 18 at the time of Ward’s trial, and these days still as spicy as ever, has also joined the fight. ‘Christine and I were never prostitutes, so it really was terrible what they did to Stephen,’ she says.
‘He was immoral, but he wasn’t living off immoral earnings - he often gave us money.’
But she says: ‘I think I may have an idea why there is such resistance to opening up all the papers. There’s someone rather special, someone above the aristocrats who I think might be mentioned in at least one of the witness statements. His name was certainly mentioned to me in Stephen’s flat one afternoon.
‘I’m not saying that this person was at an orgy or anything like that. But I’m pretty sure he would have been mentioned in a statement to the police, and so it must be in the secret file, written down somewhere, mustn’t it?’
Under the Freedom of Information legislation, she applied and received her own trial testimony. ‘It arrived with all the names redacted, which is pretty silly as they were my statements, so I knew who they all were,’ she says.
‘Look, I can’t say who the authorities are still protecting after all these years, but wouldn’t it be terrible if Stephen’s conviction wasn’t put right just so certain people can keep their noses clean.’
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