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Meanwhile Stephen Ward's explanations filled the newspapers and TV screens. The affair, he protested, had given rise to "a whole train of rumors, and all sorts of people were mentioned, with the implication that I'd been trying to procure them for Miss Keeler." Despite his subsequent attempt to protect Profumo and the government, said Ward, he had reported Profumo's liaison to British intelligence when it was at its height in 1961. Said he: "I've almost had a nervous breakdown. It's a terrible dilemma. One didn't want to bitch up anybody. You owe it to your friends. But I must clear myself."
For the immediate future, Stephen Ward will do his explaining in court. At week's end Scotland Yard plucked the osteopath from his white Jaguar sports car and jailed him on charges of violating Britain's Sexual Offenses Act by "living wholly or in part on the earnings of prostitution."
Unrest. As a matter of political tactics, the Labor Party decided to treat the Profumo affair not so much as a moral indictment of uppercrust Britain but rather as another flagrant example of the erratic workings of Britain's security system, If, argued Laborites, British intelligence had known all along that Britain's War Minister had shared a call girl with a Soviet agent, why was nothing done to break up a liaison that might expose him to Russian blackmail? Was Macmillan told? If so, had the government encouraged Profumo to lie about his dalliance with Christine Kee ler solely in order to avert a damaging scandal?
Unflappable Harold Macmillan, who did not allow last week's events to interrupt his golfing vacation, will be able to present the government's case when Parliament reconvenes next week. He may yet, as in the past, confound his critics in Commons. But the affair may seriously affect the Tories' already shaky chances at the next elections, which Macmillan will now probably try to delay. Said Tory Backbencher Lord Lambton: "The harm this will do to the Conservative Party will be enormous. There has been for some time a general feeling of unrest in this country as to the morality of the present government. This feeling will be immensely increased."