Christine Keeler (RIP)

For John, BLUF:  Very few of us know about Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies or John Profumo.  But, it is another sign of how sex influences the course of history.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Christine Keeler, former model at heart of Profumo affair, dies at 75

Here is the sub headline:

Showgirl’s affairs with Russian diplomat and British MP John Profumo caused one of UK’s biggest scandals of 20th century

Caroline Davies Tuesday 5 December 2017 15.09 EST.

Here is the lede plus one:

Christine Keeler, the former model at the centre of the Profumo affair that shook British politics in the 1960s, has died aged 75, her family and a close friend have said.

Keeler, then a teenage model and showgirl, became famous for her role in the 1963 scandal that rocked the establishment when she had an affair with the Tory cabinet minister John Profumo and a Russian diplomat at the same time at the height of the cold war. Profumo was eventually forced to resign after lying to parliament about the affair.

Here are some comments by Mark Steyn on MP John Profumo, who was forced out of Parliament over the affair, and lying about it:

There was no comeback, and no attempt at one. He accepted that his career was ruined and never sought public sympathy.  As extraordinary as his downfall was, the aftermath was unique.  On June 5th 1963 he resigned from the government, from Parliament and from the Queen’s Privy Council.  Not long afterwards, he contacted Toynbee Hall, a charitable mission in the East End of London, and asked whether they needed any help.   He started washing dishes and helping with the children’s playgroup, and he stayed for 40 years.  He disappeared amid the grimy tenements of east London and did good works till he died.  And, with the exception of one newspaper article to mark Toynbee Hall’s centenary, he never said another word in public again.

* * * * * * * *

In 1963, “Profumo” was shorthand for establishment hypocrisy.  Across 40 years, he reclaimed the narrative, as a story of shame and redemption, of acting honorably, making the best of a sticky wicket and all the other allegedly obsolescent virtues of his class the sex and hookers had supposedly rendered risible.  Had Stephen Ward not thrown a teenage girl’s bathing suit into the topiary, John Profumo would have been noted as the last surviving member of the House of Commons to vote in the confidence motion of May 8th 1940, after the fall of Norway.  He was one of only 30 Conservative MPs to join the opposition in declining to support the continued leadership of Neville Chamberlain and thus to usher Churchill into Downing Street.  That vote changed the course of the war.  But instead his place in history is as the man who saw a call-girl naked in a swimming pool.

I hadn't realized his roll in the fall of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the rise of Winston Churchill in the management of World War II.

I do wonder who in our current spate of scandals will take the Profumo Road?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff