THE PROFUMO CASE
69
as we impute to Ward simply on the biographical record, presents,
certainly, no hindrance to the taking of political positions. And the
pOSItIon most available to someone who divides his life, as Ward
did, between, on the one hand, middle-class accommodation and,
on the other hand, repudiation of the morality of the middle–
class, is the "progressive" position. The anomoly that might super–
ficially appear to be involved in the fact that Ward's communist
sympathies were matched by an achieved ambition to make his way
among the rich and well-born has long since ceased to be an anomoly
at all. Far from disqualifying Ward for the company of the wealthy
and modish, his political progressivism would have provided just the
right weighting of social solidity to balance the perhaps troubling
extreme to which he was prepared to carry the sexual adventure.
But then the question arises: Are Profumo, who was a member
of Macmillan's Conservative government, or-say-Lord Astor also
to be thought of as progressives, despite their actual political affilia–
tions? The answer, I think, is yes, but with significant modifications.
Like Ward himself, his friends must be recognized as personal–
cultural "radicals" even though, unlike Ward, the personal and
cultural choice stopped short of a politics most in keeping with
it. While we can be fairly sure that the disparate company at Lord
Astor's was organized on personal and sexual rather than political
lines-and what better solvent for political diversity than illicit sex?
-there was implicit in the style of life this various group had elected
a shared freedom in matters of morality such as nowadays most
readily translates itself into a progressive politics, or which at least
opens the path for a steady erosion of the cultural foundations of
a conservative politics.
We have a demonstration of how the process works in that
American, or international, phenomenon called Cafe Society. Lacking
a census of the political affiliations of the members of Cafe Society,
we must suppose that, given the cost of this manner of life, it attracts
as many voting Republicans as Democrats. Yet, apart from such
divergence as may exist in matters of economic opinion, Cafe Society
cannot be described as any more politically than culturally con–
servative-the chic and the conservative are antithetical principles.
In a section of society in which the latest fashion determines one's
preferences in food, dress, music, pictures, plays, a conservative
