Well he would, wouldn't he?

The Welsh model Mandy Rice-Davies used the phrase while giving evidence during the 1963 trial of the English osteopath Stephen Ward. Ward is considered to have been made a scapegoat for the Profumo affair, a scandal involving John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War. Profumo had an extramarital affair with Rice-Davies's friend, the model Christine Keeler, then lied about that affair to Parliament before publicly admitting to misleading the House. Ward was tried for living on the earnings of prostitution. The prosecution alleged that members of the British elite paid Rice-Davies and Keeler for sex, who then paid Ward from their earnings. During the trial, Ward's lawyer James Burge asked Rice-Davies whether she was aware that Lord Astor—a hereditary peer and Conservative politician—had denied having an affair with her; Rice-Davies replied "Well he would, wouldn't he?"

Since its widespread adoption following the Ward trial, political commentators, communications experts, and psychologists have interpreted "Well he would, wouldn't he?" as a political phrase that is used to indicate that the speaker believes that another person is making a self-interested denial. They have also stated that the phrase functions as a commonsense retort to the lies of elite political figures. Linguistically, the phrase has been noted for its use of the modal verb would to create rhetorical effect. The phrase has been included in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations since 1979.

Background

Profumo affair

The Profumo affair concerned John Profumo, the British Secretary of State for War, who, beginning in July 1961, had an extramarital affair with the model Christine Keeler. He denied this to the House of Commons in March 1963 when Keeler's private life became public; weeks later, he was found to have misled Parliament. The scandal severely damaged the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan, who, in October 1963, resigned for reasons of ill health. Interest in the scandal was heightened by Keeler's sexual involvement with Yevgeny Ivanov, a naval attaché at the Soviet embassy, which meant a possible national security risk. Keeler had been introduced to both Ivanov and Profumo through her friendship with Stephen Ward, an osteopath and socialite who rented a cottage on the grounds of the Cliveden estate—where Keeler and Profumo met—from William Astor, 3rd Viscount Astor, a hereditary peer and Conservative politician.

Investigation of Stephen Ward

After Profumo revealed that he had lied, the police began to investigate Ward, who was arrested and charged with living "wholly or in part on the earnings of prostitution". The police based their case on allegations that Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies, a Welsh showgirl and model, had been paid for sex and had subsequently given money to Ward. Rice-Davies was briefly jailed in HMP Holloway until she agreed to testify against Ward. Writing in The Guardian in 2014, the barrister Geoffrey Robertson stated that the Macmillan government had her arrested to coerce her into testifying. Robertson and Ward's biographer Richard Davenport-Hines consider Ward to be a scapegoat for the Profumo affair.

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Utterance

On 28 June 1963 Rice-Davies was cross-examined at Ward's committal proceedings at Marylebone magistrates' court, appearing the day after Keeler. The journalist Clive Irving, in his book on the Profumo affair—Scandal '63—wrote that Rice-Davies

wore a simple, grey dress and a hat of red petals, and unlike Miss Keeler she had a simple spontaneity ... Miss Rice-Davies's voice bubbled up and conquered the architecture. She seemed not bright enough to be a liar, and the drift of the questioning obviously eluded her. Her face ... was pale, like Keeler's, and her eyes had the same heavy make-up, which began to run when a hot sun came through the skylight of the court.

During the proceedings Ward's lawyer James Burge questioned her about her alleged affair with Lord Astor. Burge's question to Rice-Davies is variously given as "Do you know Lord Astor has made a statement to the police saying that these allegations of yours are absolutely untrue?" and "Are you aware that Lord Astor denies any impropriety in his relationship with you?". It is reported that Rice-Davies replied "Well he would, wouldn't he?" to laughter in the court. Newspapers also reported that Burge and Rice-Davies had the following exchange:

James Burge: Do you know the Indian doctor has made a statement to the police saying that these allegations are absolutely untrue? Mandy Rice-Davies: I can't help that, can I?

Rice-Davies's retort about Lord Astor was widely reported in the press the day after her testimony, and the Evening Standard featured the phrase above the headline on its front page. Some contemporary sources reported Rice-Davies's retort as "he would, wouldn't he?"; it is also sometimes misquoted as "well he would say that, wouldn't he?"

Analysis

"Well he would, wouldn't he?" is also commonly referred to as "Mandy Rice-Davies applies" (MRDA), and is an aphorism. The phrase is used as a retort to a self-interested denial. It has been interpreted in political, rhetorical, and linguistic terms as representing a counter to political elites, an ironic response to self-interested criticism, and a means of dismissing a person's opinion.

Political use

As a political phrase, "Well he would, wouldn't he?" has been interpreted as a form of defiance against elite political figures. The Scotsman and The New York Times, in their 2014 obituaries of Rice-Davies, wrote that her response represented "a new lack of deference" by ordinary people toward the political figures of post–World War II austerity governments, and The Independent commented that it "became a potent symbol of changing times". Robert McCrum, in his review of Peter Stanford's biography of Bronwen Astor, stated that the phrase was "among the most devastating sentences uttered in the English language in the last half century", and that it caused the Macmillan government's "careful reconstruction of pre-war social certainties" to be "finally exposed as utterly fraudulent".

In a 2015 article Gerard Hastings, an expert in social marketing, wrote that the phrase captured the idea of vested interest, and that with its utterance, Rice-Davies had exposed—as he saw it—that people in positions of power are willing to cover up their misdeeds and put their own interests above national security. The psychologists Derek Edwards and Jonathan Potter have suggested that Rice-Davies's use of ordinary language undermined the authority of elite lawyers and the aristocracy's denials. The historian Ged Martin said that the phrase represents a truism that some evidence presented in self-defence should be doubted "because it is inconceivable that its source would have said anything else".

Linguistic analysis

Scholars have analysed "Well he would, wouldn't he?" in linguistic and rhetorical terms as a statement that uses linguistic modality to dismiss another person's opinion as self-interested, obvious, or irrelevant. Daniel Carroll, Anne-Marie Simon-VandenBergen, and Sonia Vandepitt said that the phrase is a famous example of "usuality modalisation", which can be used to "present a personal opinion in terms of a general rule". They said that the phrase, as an if–then statement, enables the speaker to cast an opponent's utterance as "'too obvious to be worthy of comment' or irrelevant to the discussion", while showing that they are not surprised. The philosopher Timothy Williamson stated that Rice-Davies's statement was an effective explanation of Lord Astor's denial because his self-interest was evident, irrespective of whether she was being truthful; he suggested that Rice-Davies would not have achieved the same effect had she instead said "Well he did, didn't he?"

Edwards and Potter contended that Rice-Davies's response rebutted—through use of the modal verb would—an implied criticism from Lord Astor (that Rice-Davies was lying) by ironically suggesting that he was known as a self-interested person. They also stated that the phrase signifies to the listener that because the speaker of the original claim is self-interested, their opinion can be discounted. Likewise, the conversation analysts Alexa Hepburn and Sally Wiggins wrote in their 2007 book Discursive Research in Practice that Rice-Davies's statement should be evaluated from the subjective standpoint of "Astor's stake or interest in the matter" and his "clear motive to lie", rather than from an objective standpoint of reality.

Legacy

"Well he would, wouldn't he?" has been included in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (as "he would, wouldn't he") since 1979; the addition, according to her biographer Richard Davenport-Hines, "delighted" Rice-Davies. In its obituary of Rice-Davies, The Washington Post said that "the quip ... endeared her to the public". The 1992 edition of Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Catch Phrases states that the phrase "acknowledges the exasperating, and predictably contrary, reaction of someone known to the speaker(s)".