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Profumo Scandal
The Profumo affair was a major scandal in twentieth-century British politics. John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War in Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, had an extramarital affair with 19-year-old model Christine Keeler beginning in 1961. Profumo denied the affair in a statement to the House of Commons, but weeks later a police investigation exposed the truth, proving that Profumo had lied to the House of Commons. The scandal severely damaged the credibility of Macmillan's government, and Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister in October 1963, citing ill health. Ultimately, the fallout contributed to the Conservative government's defeat by the Labour Party in the 1964 general election. When the Profumo affair was first revealed, public interest was heightened by reports that Keeler may have been simultaneously involved with Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché, thereby creating a possible national security risk. Keeler knew both Profumo and Ivanov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Profumo
John Dennis Profumo, CBE,( ; 30 January 1915 – 9 March 2006) was a British politician whose career ended in 1963 after a sexual relationship with the 19-year-old model Christine Keeler in 1961. The scandal, which became known as the Profumo affair, led to his resignation from the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan. After his resignation Profumo worked as a volunteer at Toynbee Hall, a charity in East London,The Economist The Profumo affair in context and became its chief fundraiser. These charitable activities helped to restore his reputation and he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1975. Early life and career Profumo was born in Kensington, London, the son of Albert Profumo, a diplomat and barrister of Italian ancestry, who died in 1940. He attended Harrow School and Brasenose College, Oxford. In 1933, "Jack" Profumo began a long-term relationship with a German student, Gisela Klein, who later became a model and subsequently wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scapegoat
In the Bible, a scapegoat is one of a pair of kid goats that is released into the wilderness, taking with it all sins and impurities, while the other is sacrificed. The concept first appears in the Book of Leviticus, in which a goat is designated to be cast into the desert to carry away the sins of the community. Practices with some similarities to the scapegoat ritual also appear in Ancient Greece and Ebla. Origins Some scholars have argued that the scapegoat ritual can be traced back to Ebla around 2400 BC, from where it spread throughout the ancient Near East. Etymology The word "scapegoat" is an English translation of the Hebrew ( he, עזאזל), which occurs in Leviticus 16:8: The Brown–Driver–Briggs Hebrew Lexicon gives () as a reduplicative intensive of the stem , "remove", hence , "for entire removal". This reading is supported by the Greek Old Testament translation as "the sender away (of sins)". The lexicographer Gesenius takes to mean "averter", wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blackmail
Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to family members or associates rather than to the general public. These acts can also involve using threats of physical, mental or emotional harm, or of criminal prosecution, against the victim or someone close to the victim. It is normally carried out for personal gain, most commonly of position, money, or property. Blackmail may also be considered a form of extortion. Although the two are generally synonymous, extortion is the taking of personal property by threat of future harm. Blackmail is the use of threat to prevent another from engaging in a lawful occupation and writing libelous letters or letters that provoke a breach of the peace, as well as use of intimidation for purposes of collecting an unpaid debt. In many jurisdictions, bla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Admiralty (United Kingdom)
The Admiralty was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy until 1964, historically under its titular head, the Lord High Admiral – one of the Great Officers of State. For much of its history, from the early 18th century until its abolition, the role of the Lord High Admiral was almost invariably put "in commission" and exercised by the Lords Commissioner of the Admiralty, who sat on the governing Board of Admiralty, rather than by a single person. The Admiralty was replaced by the Admiralty Board in 1964, as part of the reforms that created the Ministry of Defence and its Navy Department (later Navy Command). Before the Acts of Union 1707, the Office of the Admiralty and Marine Affairs administered the Royal Navy of the Kingdom of England, which merged with the Royal Scots Navy and the absorbed the responsibilities of the Lord High Admiral of the Kingdom of Scotland with the unification of the Kingdom of Great B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Vassall
William John Christopher Vassall (20 September 1924 – 18 November 1996) was a British civil servant who spied for the Soviet Union, allegedly under pressure of blackmail, from 1954 until his arrest in 1962. Although operating only at a junior level, he was able to provide details of naval technology which were crucial to the modernising of the Soviet Navy. He was sentenced to eighteen years' imprisonment, and was released in 1972, after having served ten. The Vassall scandal greatly embarrassed the Macmillan government, but was soon eclipsed by the more dramatic Profumo affair. Early life Born in 1924 and known throughout his life as John Vassall, he was the son of William Vassall, chaplain at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and Mabel Andrea Sellicks, a nurse at the same hospital.Martland 2004. He was educated at Monmouth School. During the Second World War he worked as a photographer for the Royal Air Force. After the war, in 1948, he became a clerk (clerical officer) at t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Blake
George Blake ( Behar; 11 November 1922 – 26 December 2020) was a spy with Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union. He became a communist and decided to work for the MGB while a prisoner during the Korean War. Discovered in 1961 and sentenced to 42 years in prison, he escaped from Wormwood Scrubs prison in west London in 1966 and fled to the Soviet Union. He was not one of the Cambridge Five spies, although he associated with Donald Maclean and Kim Philby after reaching the Soviet Union. Early life George Blake was born George Behar in Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 1922. He was the son of a Protestant Dutch mother, Catherine (née Beijderwellen), and an Egyptian father of Sephardi Jewish origin who was a naturalised British subject. He was named George after George V of the United Kingdom. His father, Albert Behar, served in the British Army during the First World War. While Albert received the Meritorious Serv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portland Spy Ring
The Portland Spy Ring was a Soviet Union, Soviet spy ring that operated in England from the late 1950s to 1961, when the core of the network was arrested by the British security services. It is one of the most famous examples of the use of resident spy, resident spies, who operate in a foreign country without the cover of their embassy. Its members included Harry Houghton, Ethel Gee, Gordon Lonsdale (real name: Konon Molody), and the Americans Morris Cohen (spy), Morris and Lona Cohen (known as Peter and Helen Kroger). Tracking the spy ring In 1959, the CIA received letters from a Mole (espionage), mole, codenamed ''Sniper'' (who later was revealed to be Michael Goleniewski). ''Sniper'' said information was reaching the Soviets from the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment and HMS Osprey, Portland, HMS ''Osprey'' at Portland Harbour, Portland, England, where the Royal Navy tested equipment for undersea warfare. The CIA passed the letters to MI5, the British domestic counter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Court Of Appeal (England And Wales)
The Court of Appeal (formally "His Majesty's Court of Appeal in England", commonly cited as "CA", "EWCA" or "CoA") is the highest court within the Senior Courts of England and Wales, and second in the legal system of England and Wales only to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The Court of Appeal was created in 1875, and today comprises 39 Lord Justices of Appeal and Lady Justices of Appeal. The court has two divisions, Criminal and Civil, led by the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England respectively. Criminal appeals are heard in the Criminal Division, and civil appeals in the Civil Division. The Criminal Division hears appeals from the Crown Court, while the Civil Division hears appeals from the County Court, High Court of Justice and Family Court. Permission to appeal is normally required from either the lower court or the Court of Appeal itself; and with permission, further appeal may lie to the Supreme Court. The C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Criminal Cases Review Commission
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is the statutory body responsible for investigating alleged miscarriages of justice in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It was established by Section 8 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 and began work on 31 March 1997. The commission is the only body in its area of jurisdiction with the power to send a case back to an appeals court if it concludes that there is a real possibility that the court will overturn a conviction or reduce a sentence. Since starting work in 1997, it has on average referred 33 cases a year for appeal. Responsibilities From 31 March 1997 to 30 September 2017, the commission referred 634 cases back to appeals courts, or almost one case for every eight working days (see casework statistics below). Those referrals came from a total of 21,780 cases closed during that period, meaning that the commission has referred for appeal around 2.91% of the applications it has considered. Of the cases it has referred, ap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Establishment
''The Establishment'' is a term used to describe a dominant social group , group or elite that controls a polity or an organization. It may comprise a closed social group that selects its own members, or entrenched elite structures in specific institutions. One can refer to any relatively small social class , class or group of people who can exercise control as ''The Establishment''. Conversely, in the jargon of sociology, anyone who does not belong to ''The Establishment'' may be labelled an Emic and etic, outsider (as opposed to an "insider"). Anti-authoritarianism, Anti-authoritarian Anti-establishment, anti-establishment ideologies question the legitimacy of establishments, seeing their influence on society as Criticism of democracy, undemocratic. The term in its modern sense was popularized by the British journalist Henry Fairlie, who in September 1955 in the London magazine ''The Spectator'' defined the network of prominent, well-connected people as "the Establishment". H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East London
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that east is the direction where the Sun rises: ''east'' comes from Middle English ''est'', from Old English ''ēast'', which itself comes from the Proto-Germanic *''aus-to-'' or *''austra-'' "east, toward the sunrise", from Proto-Indo-European *aus- "to shine," or "dawn", cognate with Old High German ''*ōstar'' "to the east", Latin ''aurora'' 'dawn', and Greek ''ēōs'' 'dawn, east'. Examples of the same formation in other languages include Latin oriens 'east, sunrise' from orior 'to rise, to originate', Greek ανατολή anatolé 'east' from ἀνατέλλω 'to rise' and Hebrew מִזְרָח mizraḥ 'east' from זָרַח zaraḥ 'to rise, to shine'. ''Ēostre'', a Germanic goddess of dawn, might have been a personificatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toynbee Hall
Toynbee Hall is a charitable institution that works to address the causes and impacts of poverty in the East End of London and elsewhere. Established in 1884, it is based in Commercial Street, Spitalfields, and was the first university-affiliated institution of the worldwide settlement movement—a reformist social agenda that strove to get the rich and poor to live more closely together in an interdependent community. It was founded by Henrietta and Samuel Barnett in the economically depressed East End, and was named in memory of their friend and fellow reformer, Oxford historian Arnold Toynbee, who had died the previous year. Toynbee Hall continues to strive to bridge the gap between people of all social and financial backgrounds, with a focus on working towards a future without poverty. History Shortly after their marriage in 1873, Samuel Barnett and his wife, Henrietta, moved to the Whitechapel district of the East End of London.Canon and Mrs. S.A. Barnett (1909The Beginn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
