BOB OGLEY remembers a scandal which brought down a prime minister.

I HAVE never read E.L. James’s book Fifty Shades of Grey but I bet the storyline cannot match the events of 1963 when the scandal known as the “Profumo affair” gripped the nation and led to the resignation of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, MP for Bromley, and a man of strict morals.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of an affair which proved to be the turning point for British society.

It was a watershed moment in which ‘Supermac’, as he was known, was an innocent victim.

It was at a Conservative fete in the grounds of Holy Trinity Church, Bromley, on a warm Saturday afternoon in June 1963 where Macmillan spoke about the scandal for the first time.

He said the affair between John Profumo, a government minister and 21-year-old Chrstine Keeler had inflicted deep wounds.

“As you can imagine”, he said, “they have not broken my spirit but wounded my heart.”

A few days later, following an opposition censure motion in the House of Commons over security aspects of the affair, Supermac resigned.

“I acted honourably”, he said.

“I believed Mr Profumo’s denial of any impropriety with Miss Keeler.”

By then, of course, the people of Bromley knew it as ‘the scandal of the century’ — how Profumo met Keeler with her mentor, society osteopath Stephen Ward in the swimming pool at Cliveden, the home of Lord Astor.

There too were the other key figures such as the Russian naval attache Eugene Ivanov, Mandy Rice-Davies and Peter Rachman.

The north Kent newspapers were deeply concerned by Mr Macmillan’s sudden, almost unfair, fall from grace.

However, bitter attacks were made by both Labour and Liberal parliamentary candidates for Bromley, John Mumby and John Bloom.

The former said the Government had broken promises and abandoned moral standards.

The latter accused Mr Macmillan of ‘incompetence that bordered on utter incredulity’.

The Bromley Communist party said Mr Macmillan had led the country to ‘shame and disaster’.

As the Prime Minister was walking around that Conservative fete at Holy Trinity, close to 50 ban-the-bomb demonstrators were at the front gate shrieking ‘murderer resign’.

Their voices were drowned by a chant from 2,000 people which grew in intensity — ‘Good old Supermac’.

Write to me at Bob Ogley, News Shopper, Mega House. Crest View Drive, Petts Wood, Kent BR5 1BT, email bob@bobogley.plus.com or visit frogletspublications.co.uk