The Time of the Trollop

"A great party," cried Viscount Hailsham on TV last week, "is not to be brought down by a woman of easy virtue!" But the possibility was real enough.

In the House of Commons this week, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan would have to confront criticism from the Laborites, plus some barely suppressed dissent in his own party, of the way in which he handled, or mishandled, the Profumo scandal. In the long run, the Tories faced an even more elusive and insidious threat than parliamentary attacks--the facts in police dossiers and in the private lives of people who personify Conservative rule.

A Lie in the Nude. The week leading up to the debate in the Commons consisted mostly of talk--but what talk. Christine Keeler, the cause of it all, was strangely irrepressible and outwardly serene amid the tumbling of facades and the crash of reputations. Blossoming forth in ever more dazzling photographs, she became Britain's fastest-rising fallen woman. She was besieged by film and nightclub offers and incorporated herself as Christine Keeler, Ltd. She even landed, uncaptioned, on the cover of the austere Economist.

As for her mentor, Osteopath Stephen Ward, he was in jail, bound for trial on charges of living on prostitutes' earnings. The evidence, it was widely suspected, would prove damaging to a great many people.

Although the Labor Party concentrated on the security question, in public debate the Profumo case inevitably turned into a moral issue. Significantly, the unpardonable crime of ex-Secretary of State for War John Profumo was not that he was indiscreet and a potential security risk, but that he lied to the House of Commons in initially denying any relationship with Christine. Moreover, he lied stupidly, since he might have saved his dignity and his seat as an M.P. by admitting his misstep. As a limerick that made the rounds of West minster last week had it:

"What on earth have you done?" said Christine,

"You have wrecked the whole party machine.

"To lie in the nude

"Is not at all rude,

"But to lie in the House is obscene."

Serialized Sex. The Labor Party rallied for battle with enthusiasm. Returning from a week's visit to Moscow and pleasant if futile chats with Khrushchev about disarmament, Labor Party Leader Harold Wilson hinted he would produce new evidence this week to show that Britain's security system was breached. He had good reason for confidence: the Daily Mail's National Opinion Poll gave Labor its biggest lead ever: 69.2% to 19.8% over the Tories.

On his return from a golfing vacation, Macmillan's first objective was to command a united Cabinet. Calling his ministers into emergency session, he asked each man to outline privately his own view of the situation. Without exception, the 21 top Tories expressed deep dismay at the public's loss of confidence in the government. Macmillan was caught between two almost equally unpleasant possibilities. Had he known about Profumo's doings, and in that case had he not connived to some extent in his false denials? Or, despite the

War Minister's long reputation as a womanizer, had Macmillan really not known anything? In that case, had he not been naive and negligent when he accepted Profumo's defense?

Bed & Bawd. In his own defense, Macmillan maintains that he was first informed of Profumo's liaison last February. He denies reports that MI-5--British intelligence--had warned the government at that time that its War Minister had shared bed and bawd with Soviet Assistant Naval Attache Evgeny Ivanov. Macmillan insisted that he had no reason to doubt a man of Profumo's background (Harrow, Oxford, Infantry). Moreover, five of his ministers who "sat up half the night" of March 21 interrogating Profumo were also persuaded that he was telling the truth; the clincher was the War Minister's readiness to deny misconduct with Christine Keeler in a sacrosanct "personal statement" on the House floor next day. Macmillan's strongest argument was that a security check, which he ordered a week before his former colleague's confession, had turned up no evidence that the Russian had succeeded in using the Profumo-Keeler-Ivanov triangle to pry out secret information.

Something of a Cabinet mutiny seemed to be led by Health Minister Enoch Powell, 51, whose distaste for political compromise led him to resign from the government in 1958 in protest against an inflationary, vote-catching budget. Powell's feeling that the government had once more shown itself unbelievably lax was shared to a lesser degree by two more of Macmillan's ablest appointees, Education Minister Sir Edward Boyle (who quit the government over Suez) and Housing Minister Sir Keith Joseph, as well as a disgruntled minority of Tory backbenchers, who could themselves overthrow the government if 20 or 30 chose to abstain this week. But Macmillan's assurances quelled the mutiny, and the Tories marched into Commons outwardly united to face their greatest political threat since Suez.

Top Popsies. Meanwhile, in her newspaper "confessions," for which the News of the World paid her more (an estimated $85,000) than a girl might earn in years of casual strumpetry, Christine's artless saga of debauchery among the rich and the powerful titillated the nation, but also profoundly shocked it.

For publication, Christine flitted mainly from Evgeny ("a wonderful huggy bear of a man") back to Jack ("I liked it," said she, "I don't mind admitting") and back. Scotland Yard's dossiers on the call-girl racket may contain the names of many prominent Britons and reportedly a member of the royal family. Nobody would say, in advance of Ward's trial, just what the quid pro quo had been; Christine's confessions suggested that she enjoyed her work and was apparently somewhat offhand in business as well as affection.

If the Top Popsies seemed almost too good to be true, one peril of Profumoism was pointed up by Christine's friend, Mandy Rice-Davies, 18, and a lawyer who had been consulted by Christine. Both avowed that Ivanov had in fact tried to use Christine to worm secrets out of Profumo--even though his first try, an attempt to find out the date on which the U.S. was supposed to "give the H-bomb to West Germany," sounded more like a propaganda ploy than serious espionage.

Flash of Indignation. The Opposition may yet succeed in showing that Britain's security system was in fact breached, or that warnings from intelligence fell on deaf ears. Whatever the outcome of this week's Commons debate, there is a growing belief that

Macmillan will have to step down eventually--and may in fact have promised his own dissident ministers to do so once the heat is off. Loose factions were already forming around such possible successors to Macmillan as Deputy Prime Minister R. A. ("Rab") Butler, Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling and Science Minister Lord Hailsham.

No matter how eloquently Macmillan may weather the parliamentary crisis, the Tories simply cannot afford to be tarred by Christine. What they have traditionally offered the nation is men born and raised in the exacting disciplines of leadership. If now, in addition to all the political and economic reverses they have suffered in the past year, Britons should conclude that Etonian and Harrovian leaders are personally no wiser or more upright--and in many cases they have proved flagrantly less so--than those whom they govern, twelve years of Tory government may end in a mighty flash of moral indignation mixed with ridicule.

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