Bid to let women join fails at the AGM of the London gentlemen’s club – as one member says keeping it men only allows for ‘camaraderie and banter’

The Garrick Club, one of London’s last remaining gentlemen’s clubs, has voted to continue its policy of not admitting women as members. At the club’s annual general meeting at the Palace theatre on Tottenham Court Road, 50.5% voted in favour of allowing females to join. The club requires a two-thirds majority before rules can be changed.

The Garrick Club’s vote to keep women out is sad rather than sexist | Simon Jenkins Read more

The decision to continue to exclude women is significant because the Garrick Club has a place at the heart of the British establishment, with supreme court judges, cabinet ministers, academics, senior civil servants, diplomats and journalists among its members, as well as well-known actors.

The motion, put forward by former Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews, proposed: “For the avoidance of doubt it shall be a rule of the club that membership shall not be subject to any quota system based on ethnicity, gender, beliefs or otherwise.”

Members such as the actors Stephen Fry, Damian Lewis and Hugh Bonneville had indicated before the poll that they were in favour of extending membership to women, as had the justice secretary, Michael Gove, former justice secretary Ken Clarke and broadcasters Sir Trevor McDonald, Melvyn Bragg and Jeremy Paxman.

But those in favour of admitting women failed to get the required 66% of votes. Three former Conservative MPs and 11 QCs were among those who said they would vote to continue to exclude women members.

Who’d want to join the Garrick Club? Read more

Lewis said he had voted in favour of letting women in and was “disappointed” at the result. Broadcaster John Simpson shrugged and said: “What can you do? Nobody in the Garrick feels this is the end of the road.”

But there was some optimism from pro-female members that for the first

time there had been a majority in favour. Several members said they expected the issue to be raised again in the near future.

More than 500 of the club’s members queued in the full summer heat outside the Palace theatre to vote in a secret ballot, via electronic handsets. Some men came looking dapper in a 1950s way, in rumpled cream suits with panama hats and umbrellas or walking sticks. Many came wearing the club’s salmon pink and cucumber tie or bow tie, accessorising the look with socks and handkerchiefs in the club’s colours.

The average age of those in the club is 69, according to one member. Arriving at the theatre to vote, Paxman looked at the queue and said: “Bunch of old men. I’m in the right place then.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Garrick club members leave after voting. The Garrick is one of a handful of gentlemen’s clubs in London that still refuses to allow women members. Photograph: Amelia Gentleman for the Guardian

Sir Eric Ash said he was voting for women, adding: “It seems absolutely absurd that they aren’t in already.”

Sir John Weston also said he was supporting the call for women to be allowed to join. “About time, too. I think women will do a lot for the good sense of the club,” he said.

Another member said he had been undecided about how to vote. He asked: “I’m a huge supporter of all things anti-racist, non-gender and anti-ageist but why shouldn’t we have one or two places where chaps can get together?”

The Garrick is one of a handful of gentlemen’s clubs in London that still refuses to allow women members, along with White’s – where David Cameron was a member until he became leader of the Conservative party – Pratt’s, Boodles, Brooks’s, the Turf Club and the Travellers Club. At various points over the past 30 years, establishments such as the Reform Club, the Athenaeum and the Carlton Club have voted to admit women.

When the 2010 Equality Act was drafted, there was some discussion by Labour MPs of whether the legislation could be used to make these clubs illegal, but this proved impossible without simultaneously making it illegal to have, for example, women-only swimming clubs. The act banned clubs from excluding people on the basis of colour but allowed them to continue excluding women.

Private members' clubs put women in their place: from the archive, 13 August 1966 Read more

With a large number of members well past retirement age, many Garrick members protest that the club is no longer a bastion of male influence where crucial networking takes place, preferring to cast it as a gentle backwater, where people go to relax and retreat from their professional lives. Only a few concede that it is still an important place for making informal but useful work-related connections.

But there has been growing antipathy among women in the legal profession towards a club that welcomes so many male QCs and judges, yet excludes women. Baroness Hale, Britain’s most senior female judge, the first and only woman among 12 supreme court judges (several of whom are Garrick club members), has expressed outrage at the club’s continued exclusion of women. “I regard it as quite shocking that so many of my colleagues belong to the Garrick, but they don’t see what all the fuss is about,” she told a law diversity forum. She said judges “should be committed to the principle of equality for all”.



Trying to explain why the club was better without women, one member said: “Men behave differently if there are no women there. There is camaraderie, banter … the knowledge that you can say anything you want and have a jolly good discussion about anything in a completely egalitarian atmosphere in which no one is trying to impress anyone else.

Time, gentlemen: when will the last all-male clubs admit women? | Amelia Gentleman Read more

“That’s my main objection to having women members – it’s not against women, but the idea that some men would not be able to resist showing off to impress the women, that is an innate male characteristic, whether you are a bird or an animal. At the moment, any sort of pomposity or self-importance is punctured. You don’t need to show off, you can be yourself, have uninhibited conversation, indulge in flights of fantasy. Having women members would change the nature of the club.”

Women are allowed to enter the Garrick as guests of members, but there are places within the building where they (as non-members) are not permitted to go.

Club officials said there would be no comment on the vote. Members left the theatre to walk to the club building in nearby Covent Garden for an all-club dinner.