As a proud member of a club which was founded by women in the 80s as an antidote to the men-only clubs which populated London at that time, I feel I am able to speak without fear of retribution about the ongoing battle to preserve the gender exclusivity of some of the capital’s most traditional members’ clubs.
It is not without risk that a white, middle-class man of a certain age says this, but I don’t believe that men-only clubs should be pressured into changing their policy. I wouldn’t want to be a member of such a club, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist.
My “woke” tendencies would probably exclude me anyway, but who am I, liberal and permissive to my core, to tell people how to live their lives, in private and within the law? If a body of men want to sit around with like-minded souls, snapping their braces, drinking claret and lamenting the ways of the modern world, why must they be prevented from doing so?
I know that is a pastiche of both the purpose and the practice of what goes on behind the anonymous facades of London’s private clubs, but, in the balance between abhorring an outdated culture which excludes people on the grounds of their gender and allowing private behaviour that breaks no rules and harms no one, I come down on the side of tolerance. Liberals, too, can oppose cancel culture.
This issue has a particular relevance because one of London’s last bastions of male sovereignty, Pratt’s, has just decreed that, for the first time since its foundation in 1857, women are to be allowed to become members. This was “a positive, necessary and evolving change to enhance and invigorate the club”, its membership was told in an email, and who can gainsay such a progressive and inclusive sentiment?
Well, the members of the Garrick Club can. One of Britain’s most celebrated private clubs, it was established in 1831 as a place “where actors and men of refinement and education might meet on equal terms”, and, despite determined entreaties to change, it has maintained the gender-specificity of its articles of association. Women are allowed as visitors, but only men can become members.
In 2015, members voted by a small majority to let women in, but the reformers didn’t get the two-thirds majority for the motion to be carried. And last year, an Early Day Motion was put before Parliament urging the Garrick to change its “archaic” rules, which, according to many legal professionals, disadvantage women by denying them access to the levers of influence (the Garrick has traditionally had a large representation from the judiciary among its cloistered clientele). But still the club’s edifice was not shaken.
Men-only clubs, of which there are now fewer than a dozen in London, may be a cipher for the prejudice that women have fought against for more than a century, but to treat them as instruments of male hegemony ignores reality. Their importance as seats of influence is, from my experience, vastly overstated, and their appeal to anyone of a less-than-conservative bent is extremely limited.
My club of choice is named after Groucho Marx, who said he wouldn’t want to join a club that would have him as a member. And Groucho may have had a point. Perhaps the ultimate revenge for those agitating for change is to continue the fight for admission, and then not to join.
