More than six decades after her imprisonment, the family of Christine Keeler, the iconic figure at the heart of the Profumo affair, is mounting a final bid to clear her name. They have submitted a formal application for a posthumous royal pardon, arguing her 1963 perjury conviction was a deliberate attempt to discredit her following the political sex scandal that rocked Britain.
The Quest for a Royal Prerogative of Mercy
In May of this year, Keeler's son, Seymour Platt, and her granddaughter, Daisy Devine-Platt, 16, lodged a substantial 300-page dossier with the authorities. This document formally requests a royal prerogative of mercy, a rare mechanism that would allow the King to issue a pardon. The family's campaign is driven by a promise made to Keeler before her death in 2017, aged 75.
"I am hoping that 2026 is the year we can fulfil my mother's request to tell her story," Seymour Platt stated. "That she was a scapegoat and it was wrong that she was sent to prison. That it’s wrong that any victim of a crime has their story so twisted that they end up in prison."
A Conviction Rooted in Fear and Scandal
The perjury case for which Keeler was jailed for nine months in 1963 was technically separate from the Profumo affair, but her family insists the two were inextricably linked. The conviction stemmed from the violent assault she suffered in April 1963 at the hands of her stalker, Aloysius "Lucky" Gordon.
Although Gordon was initially convicted, he successfully appealed after it emerged Keeler had mistakenly told jurors two witnesses were not present during the attack. Her family maintains there was never any doubt the assault occurred and that Keeler, who was just 21 at the time of her sentencing, lived in genuine terror of Gordon. They also allege she was put under pressure by the witnesses involved.
The family's argument is supported by the recent assessment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC). While the justice watchdog acknowledged Keeler could not have received a fair trial due to the "unprecedented level of prejudicial media coverage," it declined to refer the case to the Court of Appeal. The CCRC concluded the court would have limited power to correct the public record regarding her role in the Profumo scandal.
A Last Hope for Justice and a Symbol for Women
With the judicial appeal route exhausted, the application for a royal pardon represents the family's last hope. A pardon under the prerogative of mercy can be considered when new evidence shows no offence was committed or, crucially, when the applicant is deemed "morally and technically innocent of the crime."
World-renowned human rights barrister Felicity Gerry KC has championed the cause, framing it as a landmark issue for women's justice. "I'm hoping 2026 is the year when we realise that Christine's case was such a terrible miscarriage of justice that her pardon matters to all women," Gerry said.
She added a powerful critique: "When there are structures not to prosecute women who are victims of crime, we have to trust they will work. How can women trust a system that doesn't recognise the wrong she suffered?"
The Profumo scandal erupted after Keeler's brief affairs with both the then Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, and a Soviet naval attaché, Yevgeny Ivanov, sparking major Cold War security fears. The controversy ultimately led to Profumo's resignation and contributed to the downfall of Harold Macmillan's Conservative government. Keeler's story was later dramatised in the hit BBC series The Trial of Christine Keeler.
Six decades on, her family's fight seeks not only to posthumously correct a legal record but to reshape the historical narrative surrounding one of Britain's most infamous political scandals.
