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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
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| The Garrick Club’s vote to keep women out is sad rather than sexist | The Garrick Club’s vote to keep women out is sad rather than sexist |
| (about 11 hours later) | |
| Who gives a damn about London’s private and male-only Garrick Club? The answer is that its members do, which is their (and incidentally my) business. So do some women, who are the only group specifically barred from membership. They protest at what is an “affinity” society, mostly of actors, writers, lawyers and media types, excluding some members of these professions on grounds of gender. They regard it as unfair and antediluvian in what is still a significant British institution. | Who gives a damn about London’s private and male-only Garrick Club? The answer is that its members do, which is their (and incidentally my) business. So do some women, who are the only group specifically barred from membership. They protest at what is an “affinity” society, mostly of actors, writers, lawyers and media types, excluding some members of these professions on grounds of gender. They regard it as unfair and antediluvian in what is still a significant British institution. |
| A narrow majority of some 500 club members at the AGM voted to end this discrimination, but not by the two-thirds majority required by the rules. The exclusivity therefore remains. The club’s public rooms are crowded with women much of the time, but not as members. | A narrow majority of some 500 club members at the AGM voted to end this discrimination, but not by the two-thirds majority required by the rules. The exclusivity therefore remains. The club’s public rooms are crowded with women much of the time, but not as members. |
| Related: Garrick Club votes to continue with ban on female members | Related: Garrick Club votes to continue with ban on female members |
| Britons are rightly allowed by law to choose for themselves the company in which to spend their leisure. Women have their clubs – including the excellent University Women’s Club. I believe the law should have no part in the matter. But where a private club is dominant in specific callings – in the Garrick’s case nowadays in the bar and judiciary – such exclusivity is plain wrong. Senior judges gather regularly at the club’s table and it is a fact that women are poorly represented in the judiciary. | Britons are rightly allowed by law to choose for themselves the company in which to spend their leisure. Women have their clubs – including the excellent University Women’s Club. I believe the law should have no part in the matter. But where a private club is dominant in specific callings – in the Garrick’s case nowadays in the bar and judiciary – such exclusivity is plain wrong. Senior judges gather regularly at the club’s table and it is a fact that women are poorly represented in the judiciary. |
| I sense these protests carry less weight than they did. The old establishment is ever more fragmentary. The uncomfortable truth is that the argument about women at the Garrick – and many other male-only clubs – is less about influence than about age. The Garrick’s average age is said to be 70, and probably older for “regulars” as opposed to occasional diners. The lovely old Covent Garden building is more a daycare centre than a club. The argument that the “presence” of women would distress “the chaps” and would stop their “camaraderie and banter” is sad rather than sexist. | I sense these protests carry less weight than they did. The old establishment is ever more fragmentary. The uncomfortable truth is that the argument about women at the Garrick – and many other male-only clubs – is less about influence than about age. The Garrick’s average age is said to be 70, and probably older for “regulars” as opposed to occasional diners. The lovely old Covent Garden building is more a daycare centre than a club. The argument that the “presence” of women would distress “the chaps” and would stop their “camaraderie and banter” is sad rather than sexist. |
| Related: Who’d want to join the Garrick Club? | |
| Women’s membership has invigorated clubs such as the Athenaeum and the Reform. The Garrick old guard is representative of an ageing, but no longer dying, generation. It is probably right that women would (mildly) alter the character of the Garrick. I cannot imagine anything more salutary. | Women’s membership has invigorated clubs such as the Athenaeum and the Reform. The Garrick old guard is representative of an ageing, but no longer dying, generation. It is probably right that women would (mildly) alter the character of the Garrick. I cannot imagine anything more salutary. |
| Those of us on the losing side of this battle face the periodic quandary. A dribble of protest resignations after each vote reduces the steady swing towards women next time round. If the Garrick’s membership matters, as a totemic corner of public life, that is a pity. If not, who cares? | Those of us on the losing side of this battle face the periodic quandary. A dribble of protest resignations after each vote reduces the steady swing towards women next time round. If the Garrick’s membership matters, as a totemic corner of public life, that is a pity. If not, who cares? |