John Profumo

Harry, do you really think that having an affair and lying about it is worse than starting a war after lying about it, all for political gain?

Profumo’s “heinous” mistake was that of a cabinet minister from the Ministry of Defence lying to Parliament about a situation that was at the time recognised by other government ministers as a potentially serious security risk. The subsequent trial of Stephen Ward on charges of “living on immoral earnings” of Christine Keeler – with whom Profumo had been having an affair – added much to the dimensions of the scandal and enhanced an impression of pervasive sleaze in high places. The BBC’s website has a balanced, extensive account of the whole affair: http://www.bbc.co.uk/crime/caseclosed/profumo.shtml

The most lasting legacy of the Profumo business was the immortal line uttered by Mandy Rice-Davies, in response to denials from one of those involved “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he”.

This line is so apposite, in so many contexts, it deserves its own acronym.

bob b

That’s a rather tendentious summary of: Halifax’s decision to rule himself out (or he blinked first if you prefer); Halifax’s role in considering how to respond to the French government’s request for negotiations with Italy to avoid Musso entering the war; and Churchill’s role in ending that discussion, most often seen as the result of Tory ministers outside the Cabinet.

See Lukacs, Five days in London.

I’d like to be the first one to cite Kundera to respond to Barry’s question.

barry,

thanks for not forcing me to dig myself further in. Yes, sure I think Clinton should have resigned, not for what he did with Lewinsky, or even for perjuring himself, but lying about it to the public, to his entire party and to all his supporters, thus manipulating many of them, including many of his cabinet colleagues into supporting him, which is what I would find unforgivable if I were a Democrat.

I think that Blair should have too, and also Bush, once it became clear that they could not verify the existence of so called WMDs (which is before it was beyond reaosnable doubt that this war was a disaster).

Here’s the thing, though. I wouldn’t expect Bush to devote his subsequent life to good works, because I believe he is so obviously lacking in the moral strength and insight that would lead someone to do that. (ditto Clinton, and, I think, Blair, though I find him incredibly hard to figure out).

But I bet I wouldn’t have expected Profumo to, either, if I’d been of an age to understand in 1963 (I was 0 yrs old).

Harry – I’m suitably impressed by John Lukacs book: Five Days in London – May 1940 (Yale UP, 1999), but then it resonates my own chauvinistic prejudices about Churchil’s great achievement in not losing the war, even if America and the Soviet Union eventually won the war. Even worse by some lights, I go along with Von Runstedt’s assessment after the war. When asked by his Soviet captors as to which battle he considered decisive, he replied: the Battle of Britain – in the summer of 1940. That’s absolutely right IMO. Had the Battle of Britain been lost – or had Churchill negotiated a settlement with Germany – there could have been no Normandy invasion in June 1944. America became embroiled in the war in Europe when Germany declared war on America three days after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Check out the account in William Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich – he was in Washington at the time.

Lord Halifax has not been kindly treated by history. By some accounts, he did the job he was required to do as foreign secretary in applying Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. By other accounts, he was basically sympathetic towards the Nazis and what they had achieved in Germany: “Halifax’s friend, Henry (Chips) Channon, reported: ‘He told me he liked all the Nazi leaders, even Goebbels, and he was much impressed, interested and amused by the visit. He thinks the regime absolutely fantastic.'”
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWhalifaxL.htm

On Profumo, the important issue was not so much the uncovered fact of his affair with Christine Keeler but that as a cabinet minister with a Ministry of Defence portfolio he was sharing a girl friend with the naval attache at the Soviet embassy in London. The fact that he denied the affair indicated that he recognised it was embarrasing and that implied he was vulnerable to being blackmailed, hence the security risk. Such particulars don’t apply to Clinton and Miss Lewinsky.

My personal interest in these events is perhaps excused by the regretable fact in retrospect that I’ve lived through almost all of them.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for John Profumo, becuase I really like the Phil Ochs song about the scandal, which remains my primary source of information about him:

http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/christine-keeler.html

I can’t get too worked up over Clinton or Bush, when the closest thing we’ve had to an American dictator (striving to override Congress and the Court, breaking Washington’s voluntary — but very wise — two-term rule, perpetuating an economic catastrophe while drawing power from its existence) is still regarded by most as a hero.

Bob B & I were both of an age to follow this as it evolved, and I’m afraid that “a situation that was at the time recognised by other government ministers as a potentially serious security risk” is close to being utter bollocks.
Almost all other government ministers apart, apparently, from MacMillan, were well aware of what the old goat was up to at the time, and a lot of them were up to it too. The “national security” aspect was a ploy by Wilson & Wigg to keep the story running. If national security really had been threatened they’d all have kept schtum.

Otto – Huge efforts have gone into smearing Conservatives in Britain for appeasement of Hitler and for condoning fascism – such as Michael Foot’s famous polemic: The Guilty Men (1940).

Supposedly, the Cambridge spies/traitors (Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt and (?) John Cairncross) were motivated to do what they did on behalf of the Soviet Union because Conservative governments of the 1930s were soft on opposing fascism: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/coldwar/cambridge_spies_02.shtml

“The fact is that the rearmament programme was seriously begun under Baldwin [Britain’s prime minister 1923-1924; 1924-1929; 1935-1937] pushed along more slowly than Churchill wanted, but more quickly than the opposition advocated. Defence spending, pegged at about 2.5 per cent of GNP until 1935, increased to 3.8 per cent by 1937.” [Peter Clarke: Hope and Glory: Britain 1900-1990 (Penguin,1997), p.187]

A white paper of March 1935 announced the then Conservative government’s commitment to stepping up rearmament: “In a major reversal of rearmament policy Britain today announced new expansion plans for its army, navy and air force. The plans, in a defence white paper, are to demonstrate that Britain does not take lightly Germany’s continuing rearmament.”
http://century.guardian.co.uk/1930-1939/Story/0,,126998,00.html

That was at a time when George Lansbury – Labour Party leader (1931-5) until he lost his Parliamentary seat at the general election of November 1935 – was a pacificist and opposed all rearmament on principle.

Neville Chamberlain, Baldwin’s successor as Conseravtive PM, was certainly naive in believing that he “could do business with Hitler” and which resulted in the Munich agreement of September 1938 on the issue of German proposals for annexing the (German speaking) Sudetenland region of Czecho-Slokakia. But Chamberlain and the government soon came to recognise the realities when Hitler completed the annexation of Czecho-Slovakia in the following March of 1939. The government’s response then was to make an unsolicited offer of a treaty to Poland to defend its territorial integrity against aggression. It was on the basis of that treaty obligation that Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 failing a response to an ultimatum calling on Germany to halt the invasion of Poland that had started on 1 September. Thus started WW2.

The Soviet Union contracted a Friendship Treaty with Nazi Germany on 28 September 1939 when Britain and France were already at war with Germany. That treaty, among other issues, provided for the friendly exchange of military liaison officers between the armies of Germany and the Soviet Union across their new mutual border running across what had previously been Poland’s national territory. [Norman Davies: Europe (OUP, 1996) p.1000]

The German invasion of the Soviet Union, which started on 22 June 1941, came as a complete surprise to Stalin, who had been dismissing incoming intelligence reports warning of a prospective invasion – from Soviet agents and from Churchill – as so much “disinformation”. Stalin had trusted Hitler.

In the context, we can sensibly probe why so much effort has been invested in damning Chamberlain for appeasement. Admittedly, he had been naive but his over-riding motivation in 1938 was to avoid the carnage of another European war – hence: “peace in our time” on his return from Munich. The rational interpretation of events on the evidence is that the self-styled left and fellow travellers have desperately needed to divert attention for their complicity in wittingly or unwittingly supporting Nazi Germany.

There is worse. Fascism and Nazism are fundamentally “leftist” ideologies. Mussolini was a socialist before he went on to found the Fasci di Combattimento in 1919. The fundamental programme of the National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazis) of February 1920 was a socialist as well as a virulently racist manifesto. Robert Conquest, in his study of Stalin (Weidenfeld, 2000), notes an event which yields a valuable insight. The British ambassador to Nazi Germany in 1936 reported back to the foreign office that the contingent of ex-Communists in a march past of the SA [Sturmabteilung] – the Nazi brown shirts – in Berlin was the best turned out.

As Professor Brustein puts it: “The Nazi Party leaders were savvy enough to realise that pure racial anti-semitism would not set the party apart from the pack of racist, anti-semitic, and ultranationalist groups that abounded in post-1918 Germany. Instead, I would suggest, the Nazi success can be attributed largely to the economic proposals found in the party’s programs, which in an uncanny fashion integrated elements of 18th and 19th century nationalist-etatist philosophy with Keynesian economics. Nationalist etatism is an ideology that rejects economic liberalism and promotes the right of the state to intervene in all spheres of life including the economy.” [The Logic of Evil – The Social Origins of the Nazi Party 1925-33 (Yale UP, 1996) p.51].

A project of public works to cut unemployment in the depression in Britain had been proposed in a Liberal Party pamphlet co-authored by Keynes for the 1929 general election with the title of: Can Lloyd George Do It? By a curious irony Keynes went to give a lecture in Germany in January 1932 [DE Moggridge: Maynard Keynes; (1992) p.539] so it’s seems likely his policy ideas were picked up then by the Nazis and very likely inspired Strasser’s proposals made later that year for a Nazi programme to create jobs by public works.

Anyway, Lloyd George later made a visit to Germany in 1936 when he met Hitler and was sufficiently impressed by that experience to say afterwards: “Fuehrer is the proper name for him. He is a great and wonderful leader.” Lloyd George was the last Liberal prime minister in Britain (1916-22).

As for the cry in demonstrations in those times for an anti-fascist front, who this side of sanity in the late 1930s could or would have depended on any common front engaging the Soviet Union given the Ukraine famine of 1932/3 (an inevitable consequence of Stalin’s policy announced in December 1929 to “eliminate the kulaks as a class” to solve the Agrarian Problem), the Moscow show trials starting in 1936 or the execution of 98 out of the 139 members of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party on Stalin’s orders?

All that relating background is almost invariably omitted for convenience from the routine denunciations of appeasement.

redwolf,

Clinton committed perjury. But the reason he should have resigned — or at least should have been stoned by every single Democrat, is that he lied to his party (via the public) thus effectively depriving the party of leadership for the subequent 2 years and…well, perhaps the subequent 8 years is a better guess. I think the Democrtats have still to recover. And I see no prospect ofthem doing so. Not all his fault — but I think a leader of any European party who did what he did would have been forced by its members to resign.

Harry, a quick way out of this is just to say that Bush is worse than Hitler and deserves to be sodomized in Hell for all eternity. Spend five or six paragraphs on this one point.

Then say that maybe Clinton should have resigned for lying.

You’ll have to deal with maybe only 60% of the “BUT WHAT ABOUT BUSH!!!!” comments.

Ray —

Bubba established his Foundation in Harlem only after there was an outcry about him establishing it downtown, in a much richer part of Manhattan.

Deft political touch or what?!

bob b, thanks for pointing that out. Harry, I’d place the majority of the lack of leadership on the, frankly, quislings who control the Democratic Party leadership. Notice that when Bush put his fraudulent first budget on the table, they almost trampled each other in their willingness to sign. Even in 2005, they only opposed Social Security destruction when it became clear that they didn’t have to lead, merely pose in front of those doing the work.

I honestly believe that a large number of them figure that they can have a nice career as the GOP slowly destroys the Democratic Party.

josh, at this point it’s clear that comparing Clinton’s actual crimes to Bush’s is like comparing a petty thief with a career criminal. I’m not impressed by people who strain at Clinton, but swallow Bushes. Harry’s original comparison was extremely bad; it ignored the difference between a cabinet minister and a president.

It’s a measure of the extent to which Thatcher and Blair particularly have undermined Parliament that today this would probably be seen as the least of his offences.

It might be a case of stressing the irony too much, but I think to some extent it was true that it was the atrophy of the press censorship system that led to the growth of prime ministerial powers at the expense of parliament. One of the significant roles of parliament was as a place where anything could be said, and reported as being said. These days, we have the Today programme.

Sampson’s updated issue of ‘anatomy of britain’ had 3 big circles representing the ‘powers that be’ – the rich, the PM (and aides), and the media. All the other actors (parliament, unions, military, judges, etc) are small circles, occupied mainly with defending their own turf, not fighting the big battles.

There have been weak PM’s since things become that way (e.g. major), and they have been eaten for breakfast by the media. And the rich may sometimes buy politicians, but they own the media on a more permanent and formal basis.

One way of looking at things is that only the media is standing between the country and a ‘big man’ dictatorship. But the other is that only the PM is standing between the country and government by Daily Mail/Fox News headline writers.

Worst case, you get both, as in Italy.

Even in america, which generally has a much weaker media establishment, Bush could not push through the Dubai ports deal against the Fox News agenda.

I’ve been away a couple of days, and probably no-one is following this any more. I didn’t mean to lay the Democrats’ current troubles entirely at Clinton’s door, and I realise that his failure to resign was as much a symptom as a cause of the problems the Dems had and still have. Nor did I mean to equate what he did with what Bush has done in terms of outcomes, and was pretty clear about that (eventually!) as josh pointed out.

I am more or less entirely mystified by the goodwill people vaguely on the left extend to Clinton, assuming it must all be down to some sort of partisanship. I pointed out why I think he should have stepped down, and no-one has really explained why the following combination of acts do not constitute a resigning offence (albeit a much less serious one than leading people into a failed war, even with the best of intentions and information, assuming that is what Bush had, which I don’t):

1) committing pejury
2) very publicly lying to the entire public about the matter on which one has committed perjury
3) lying to one’s own party about the same matter with the presumption that its members will defend you
4) as 3) except to one’s cabinet members some number of whom are one’s friends
5) being found out in time to make it almost impossible for one’s vice president to figure out how to relate to one in the subsequent election in which he is by far the most likely candidate.

So, could any Western European party leader have survived that?

I’m truelly amazed to see today’s politicians getting away with blue murder, but I think it’s always been like that, it’s just that the media plays a much bigger role today – TV and satelites bringing us instant, indepth news right into our homes – and we have a far more aggressive media today (that unfortunate Al Grahib (?) jail business for example, which wasn’t and isn’t unique, such things are standard operating procedure. An aside: have you noticed that no officers are ever courtmartialled? Aren’t they responsible for the soldiers under their command, anymore?) Another thing; today’s politicians are usually lawyers, and see to it they can’t be pinned down…personally. Teflon Tony lives on this. ‘I haven’t lied about WMD!’ True, he sees to it he has bumph to back his statements, bumph supplied by faceless – and unaccountable – party workers. That the bumph is a lie isn’t his fault…legally. And Clinton didn’t lie, he just has another view to the rest of the world of what and what isn’t sex!

I only met John Profumo briefly, twice, the first time he was picking up Chris at Ward’s, to go out for a drive and afternoon tea, there’s a photo out on the net Ward took only seconds before Profumo arrived, Chris sitting in an armchair, Ward’s briefcase just behind her right shoulder. Chris is looking at me! (Well, I was a gorgeous boy…) His wife was one of a team of ladies and gents into helping victims of child and wife abuse, trying to find a way of stopping it. Ward did a lot of work for St. Barnardo’s, helping traumatised kids, the press never mentioned that, nor the fact that he never passed East Grinstead without stopping to visit the burned RAF pilots there, having worked with them during the war. I know this, I was with him. Other members were Claire Raynor (cousin to John Mills wife, Mary, who went to school with the lady who started this group, the wife of one of my teachers at Quernmore in Bromley) Mary Woodhouse, Marlene Redman (the Honda roadracer’s wife) Mrs. Carruthers, one of my teachers (husband commanded a regiment of tanks in the desert, actress Jenny Agutter’s father was one of his officers) and 17-18 year old Lady Jaqueline Rufus-Isaacs of Reading, a rape victim herself, as were most of the others in the group, yes, a sad fact. Profumo himself was a silent member, waiting until he was prime minister so he could begin pushing for reform. Most of the violence in society was poverty-based, so wiping out poverty and giving people better housing were on the top of his list. As was sex-education. Profumo and his wife knew that the pill was on the way, and this would cause great distress if the kids weren’t educated how to deal with the free-sex that would follow. Ward had been doing research into sex and teen sex for 2 of the world’s leading psychiatrists, Professor’s Miller and Asher (they had to keep a low profile, this research was illegal) Professor Raphael Cilento was involved too (actress Diane’s dad, Sean Connery’s first wife?) so they were nearly there already when it came up.

So I wasn’t suprised when I heard that Profumo gave his life to charity-work after the scandal. He was like that.

And it was a scandal, he was framed, it was a setup. Dangerous business, to do with the freemasons, black occult rituals, human sacrifice, by people in high places. Powerful people. Mariella Novotny was murdered to stop her publishing her book, they missed Lady Dymphna Shagwell-Ironside but her secret diaries of those days have now apparently been bought from Martin Baker, the man she trusted to publish them after her death, and thus her story has been suppressed, too. She trusted the wrong guy. Dusty Springfield had a document that would crush Britain. She kept it in a bankbox in the USA, but who has it now she’s dead, I just don’t know. Both she and I witnessed it.
But the truth will come out one day, I’ll see to that. But it’s so fantastic, will people believe it?