In recent days, The Guardian has been on the warpath against the Garrick – one of the last remaining London gentlemen’s clubs that refuses to change its men-only membership policy. The newspaper’s coverage has already induced several prominent members to resign – though not before they tried to salvage their membership with the half-baked excuse that they wanted to reform the club from within.
This author can’t see anything wrong with the Garrick’s membership policy. In fact, it’s a positive good that men-only clubs exist. After all, the sexes are not indistinguishable and the dynamics of mixed-sex groups tend to differ from those of single-sex groups. Yes, it can be enjoyable to fraternise with men and women together. But it’s also pleasant to spend time in an all-male environment.
The Garrick’s critics, however, aren’t convinced. They make two main arguments against the club’s “antediluvian” membership policy (to quote former Garrick-member and aspiring gender activist Simon Case).
The first is that it’s unfair, unequal and downright non-inclusive for the club to bar women from membership. This is the weaker of the two arguments. Why? Well, if it’s “unfair” for the Garrick to bar women, then pretty much all single-sex associations have to go. That includes sports teams, lesbian bars and mosques (which are often segregated by sex). Some anti-Garrick campaigners might welcome this change, but many would not.
What’s more, even if the club did start admitting women, it’s membership policy would still be deeply “unfair”. Let’s be frank: 99.9% of the population are ineligible by virtue of being too poor and socially irrelevant. The quibble is over whether the female part of the remaining 0.1% should get to join. A move to allow women members would not be some grand victory for “equality” and “inclusiveness”, since the overwhelming majority of women (and men) would still be excluded.
Note that “0.1%” is surely generous on my part. The Garrick’s current roster has around 1,500 names – which amounts to just 0.002% of the population. And there’s apparently a ten year waiting list for new members. Whether a handful of high-powered women should get to join an ultra-exclusive dinner club is hardly the burning civil rights issue of our time.
The second anti-Garrick argument is slightly more compelling: women in professions like law and politics are disadvantaged with respect to their male peers, since they can’t mingle with senior judges and cabinet ministers in the Garrick’s hallowed halls. As the nominally Conservative MP Caroline Nokes opined, “It’s wrong in today’s society to have places that are still so pivotal to the establishment that exclude 51% of the population”.
There are several objections to this argument. In the words of one anonymous current member, the club is “very much not a networking venue”, with business meetings being specifically banned. While I’m sure the occasional favour gets exchanged across the dinner table, that’s explicitly not what the club is for.
Moreover, women aren’t actually barred from attending the Garrick but merely from becoming members. So the extent of their supposed disadvantage is rather limited (though they do have to be formally invited, which I suppose could be prohibitive for some).
Put all that to one side. There’s a stronger objection to the argument outlined above: The Guardian’s own reporting clearly demonstrates the club is not “pivotal” to any single profession let alone the entire establishment. Going by the numbers given here, Garrick members comprise: 8% of Supreme Court judges; 14% of Court of Appeal judges; 6% of High Court judges; 7% of KCs; and just 1.5% of MPs. The percentage of Lords who are members can’t be computed as the article simply refers to “dozens”. There are 792 Lords in total.
In other words, 86–94% of senior lawyers are not members and 98.5% of MPs are not members. To insist the fate of the nation is being decided at 15 Garrick Street is preposterous.
If membership were limited to senior male lawyers, say, and a large percentage of them were members, the argument that female lawyers are at a disadvantage might have some merit. But this plainly isn’t the case: the overwhelming majority of senior male lawyers are not members. Any professional advantage conferred by membership is enjoyed only by the few dozen men who happen to have been elected.
Now, you can claim it’s unfair that those specific men get to consort with one another at a swanky venue in Covent Garden, but that’s entirely different from claiming that women face a disadvantage compared to men. And then you’re just objecting to the fact of life that some people are more connected than others.
The Garrick isn’t some public body that is obligated to elect anyone who’s sufficiently “important” regardless of their personal characteristics. It’s a private members’ club whose purpose is to provide those members with merriment. And if maintaining the club’s long-standing traditions is what best achieves that purpose in the eyes of members, then it should keep on keeping on. The arguments against the Garrick don’t stack up.
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When my Cambridge college produced a Who’s Who of members, there was a category for “club,” and I was surprised how many of my erstwhile chums were members of these London joints. I wasn’t particularly miffed at having been left out of the Inner Circle all my adult life, but I had the distinct impression I wouldn’t get away with claiming membership of the Tufty Club.
That said, my wife’s academic cousin has occasionally met us in London for lunch at her club – which is exclusively female.
“which is exclusively female.”
So you had to trannie up presumably?
Off – T
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/this-psychotic-denial-of-the-vaccine-link-to-cancer/
Neville Hodgkinson at TCW firmly presenting the case that the jibbies are causing a cancer explosion.
Tell me about it.
The same Guardian readers would probably be ok with that theatre we saw on DS last week that invited blacks only so they could avoid the “white gaze” . —–In the Equality Diversity Gender Race and Climate wars, you can spot hypocrites at 40 paces.
To be fair, I dread to think how much a vodka, lime and soda would cost in this joint ( and I laugh in the face of a piddly single measure
) therefore zero rodent butts are given from this quarter. I’ll take a Whetherspoons or good old spit and sawdust traditional pub over poncey exclusive watering holes any time.
Yep but it is their club, they can invite who they want and pay 20 quid for a shandy if they like. —–Let’s not give any ammunition to the likes of the Guardian
Exactly, mogs. And if the only way these men can meet up with their male pals is by paying a fortune for said poncy club, then they really can’t be all that special, can they?!
How would they tell the difference between a ‘black’ person with brown skin and a white person with a tan?
40 paces? A mile!
And here we are today with woman demanding spaces just for women.
”Whether a handful of high-powered women should get to join an ultra-exclusive dinner club is hardly the burning civil rights issue of our time.”
Which is what it is really about, the usually gobby, me-me-me wimmin, wanting privileges that lower rank wimmin don’t have.
Remember the Suffragettes – equal rights for women? Except: they were agitating for voting rights for upper & middle class women, saying that working class women would not have the intelligence, learning or wider experience to be able to make important decisions about who should govern.
Funny old World.
Annie Kenney, born in Oldham 1879 went to work in a cotton mill at the age of ten. She certainly was campaigning for votes for working class women.
On the second argument: so the legal profession is simply corrupt but women are being excluded from attaining a level of corruption open to their male peers?
Has The Guardian done the Freemasons?
In London there are women only clubs and according to The Sybarite the following are the top five:
1. The University Women’s Club “A haven in London for educated women”
2. The Allbright “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other”
3. The Sorority “What belongs to you will come to you, when you create the capacity to receive it.”
4. The Trouble Club “She was looking for Trouble, and she found it”
5. The Merit Club “We are not a women-in-business network”
I’m male (pronouns Oi/Mate) and will never get into the Garrick and so what? Networking has been important to me but first comes competence in something which creates a reputation, which then leads to networking. My old Clarinet teacher (Principle BSO) told the story about a clarinettist that, in his own words, ‘talked my way into the profession, and played my way out’.
I hope the Garrick sticks to its male only membership policy. I enjoy the company of women, but there are occasions I want to get away from their constant wittering and spend time talking about bloke stuff to blokes without having to keep mansplaining to the weaker sex.