Fifty years ago, John Profumo resigned as Secretary of State for War following revelations of an affair with Christine Keeler — who was allegedly also involved with a Soviet spy. At the time, the affair was seen to represent the pinnacle of sleaze and contempt for the British establishment, and turned out to be hugely damaging to the Conservative government led by Harold Macmillan.
Digging through the archives in the basement of Old Queen Street, The Spectator’s leader from the 13 June 1963 issue, entitled ‘What are we?’, perfectly portrays the shock of the Profumo affair. It also speaks of the malaise hanging over Britain at the time and the immediate impact for those in Westminster, including the Prime Minister:
‘Men do not cease to be men when they become Ministers. Certainly the Profumo affair has not clarified issues themselves, but the reaction to it has shown that there are issues demanding clarification. If we were confused before, muddled about values and standards, uncertain of where we were and where we were going, we had not as a society grasped it. Now we have. This is the real effect of Mr. Profumo’s admission. Lord [Hartley] Shawcross was right when he said on Monday, sympathising with the Prime Minister, that the bell that had tolled was sounding for all of us — cold comfort though it must have been.
‘What we have to do in the meantime is keep our heads high enough above the swirling, stinking wash of salacity, hypocrisy, and (often factitious) moral outrage to perceive the real nature of the shock which Mr. Profumo’s admission has delivered, to discern the underlying disquiet released by that shock, and to distinguish the relevant issues. Is this a matter for party politics? Of course it is.
‘For some time there has been thought to be a malaise in British society, generally felt and variously explained. We believe that this flows basically not from the hangover of the old pre-Keynesian order but, more simply, from the frustrations and uncertainties following Britain’s loss of power. How should we order our life at home in the interests of security, efficiency, social justice, and decency?’
It was also that week in 1963 when The Spectator announced the death of Timothy Birdsall, one of the finest cartoonists ever to grace our pages. In this week’s magazine, his friend and then-editor at Private Eye Christopher Booker bemoans his untimely demise at the tender age of 27. For those too young to remember Birdsall, this was his rapid rise:
‘Tim was part of that talented late-1950s Cambridge generation, along with a galaxy of others later to become famous, from Peter Cook to Ian McKellen. On coming down in 1960 he was employed to do pocket cartoons for the Sunday Times, in the tradition that has led from Osbert Lancaster to Matt. But it was in his final months that his career blossomed, first when in August 1962 he joined The Spectator, where his cartooning suddenly took on a wholly new depth and power; then when, that winter, he became a nationally known figure with his quirkily original weekly slot on the BBC’s groundbreaking satire show That Was the Week that Was.’
And if there’s any doubt about how good Birdsall was, this is what he had to say on say on sleaze in Westminster, a full few months before the Profumo affair broke:
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