The Profumo affair was a major scandal in British politics during the early s. John Profumo , the year-old Secretary of State for War in Harold Macmillan 's Conservative government, had an extramarital affair with the year-old model Christine Keeler beginning in Profumo denied the affair in a statement to the House of Commons in ; weeks later, a police investigation proved that he had lied. The scandal severely damaged the credibility of Macmillan's government, and Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister in October , citing ill health.
The fallout contributed to the Conservative government's defeat by the Labour Party in the general election. Keeler knew both Profumo and Ivanov through her friendship with Stephen Ward , an osteopath and socialite who had taken her under his wing. The exposure of the affair generated rumours of other sex scandals and drew official attention to the activities of Ward, who was charged with a series of immorality offences.
Perceiving himself as a scapegoat for the misdeeds of others, Ward took a fatal overdose during the final stages of his trial, which found him guilty of living off the immoral earnings of Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies.
An inquiry into the Profumo affair by a senior judge, Lord Denning , assisted by a senior civil servant, T. Critchley, concluded that there had been no breaches of security arising from the Ivanov connection. Denning's report was later described as superficial and unsatisfactory. Profumo subsequently worked as a volunteer at Toynbee Hall , an East London charitable trust. By he had been officially rehabilitated, although he did not return to public life. He died, honoured and respected, in By contrast, Keeler found it difficult to escape the negative image attached to her by press, law, and parliament throughout the scandal.
In various, sometimes contradictory, accounts, she challenged Denning's conclusions relating to security issues. Ward's conviction has been described by analysts as an act of establishment revenge, rather than serving justice.
