Clubland is a refuge for relics, and my friends

What kind of man wants to join a club that doesn’t admit women? That is the question many esteemed chaps in British society must have asked themselves and answered “me” when paying their dues to the male-only Garrick Club, or indeed the Travellers in Pall Mall.

Some of our most notable public figures, politicians, civil servants, bishops, judges, lawyers, actors and artists were outed in a leaked list of the Garrick’s membership this week, published in the Guardian.

The roll call includes King Charles, Michael Gove, Oliver Dowden, Kwasi Kwarteng, outgoing Royal Opera House maestro Antonio Pappano, the BBC’s John Simpson, Stephen Fry and actors Brian Cox and his Succession co-star Matthew Macfadyen, to name just a few household names.

At least half of the above are in favour of admitting women to the club but the last vote in 2015, when 50.5 per cent supported a change in the rules, failed because a two-thirds majority was required. 

Now two high-profile members, head of the Civil Service Simon Case and MI6 boss Sir Richard Moore, have quit the Garrick in the wake of the expose, in a move that has neither endeared them to fellow clubbers nor to women.

“I am not that interested in men’s decisions to feel good about themselves,” said a scathing Andrea Leadsom, Tory MP and former leadership hopeful.

It is an issue that has divided opinion – and women – long before this week’s revelations. While Leadsom wouldn’t want to join a “pathetic” institution that hasn’t admitted women for 200 years, other women crave access to its corridors, and armchairs, of power.

The journalist Mary Ann Sieghart believes clubs like the Garrick damage women’s careers because men gain a professional advantage from the informal “schmoozing” it facilitates.

“Anybody who believes in fairness and equality should feel extremely uncomfortable about being a member of a club that excludes half the population,” she said.

I believe in fairness and equality – who doesn’t? – but with a membership of just 1,500 the Garrick is exclusive to pretty much everyone, man or woman.

In the battle of the sexes, the debate has evolved since the 1980s, when the Fleet Street wine bar El Vino had to be forced by a change in legislation to serve women at the bar. 

As well as being allowed to buy our own drinks, we are now entitled to equal pay and equal rights, as enshrined in the Equality Act.

Harriet Harman, the Labour MP who drafted that law in 2010, argues that politicians and senior civil servants should not belong to clubs that don’t uphold a recognised public policy objective. 

But in the current culture wars, when the very definition of “woman” is under attack and outspoken feminists are pilloried and threatened for defending hard-won gains, the matter of a dwindling number of gentlemen’s clubs is something of a sideshow.

Most bastions of male-only clubland have succumbed to the march of time and a mere handful remain, anachronisms that cling on for dear life, like so many British traditions.

We retain several cherished establishments that are so exclusive they would not be invented today, from the monarchy, to the House of Lords, to Eton, though women are not the issue in all of these, of course.

When a former female prime minister, Theresa May, is a member of the Athenaeum, once a male preserve, and the fusty New Club of Edinburgh appointed two female chairmen in succession, progress is surely real and male domination is on the wane.

The Garrick, then, provides refuge for the last few who need a place of their own to indulge in the banter and enjoy the camaraderie that the presence of women apparently precludes.

One member told the Guardian that men “behave differently” around women and so they do, and women likewise, to state the obvious. But men, and women, can and do gather separately in pubs and book clubs and football games, on hen dos and stag nights.

Those who get cross with the Garrick resent its elitism as much as its sexism, and perhaps its hypocrisy. The “good” members who would let us in could always resign en masse and join more inclusive clubs.

As for the throwbacks, those men who would be furious if “girls” invaded their space, we shouldn’t worry about them. They are unlikely these days to be the movers and shakers in the land, otherwise, like Richard Moore, they would have had “conversations with senior female colleagues” by now.

Far from being a reflection of misogynistic society, I see the Garrick, and the Travellers, as reminders of how we have moved on; museums housing relics of a bygone age and, as it happens, some of my dear friends.

Another vote on female membership is expected in June and I doubt the 50 per cent or so in favour will shift much in the direction of reform.

Where this would have driven me to apoplexy a quarter of a century ago, my mood, like decent club claret, has mellowed with age.

Some years back, I embarked on a relationship with a man who, to my horror, was put forward and duly accepted as a member of the male-only Beefsteak.

Why, I raged at deaf ears, would you want to belong to a club that I can’t join? Reader, I married him.

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