The Garrick Club’s vote this week in favour of admitting women as members mattered. It mattered – and was the subject of widespread public debate – because the club’s prominence in London’s establishment landscape made its exclusion of women seem unjust and wrong. With a large number of senior judges and other public servants as members, it simply could not pass as just another club. Some might argue that this popularity speaks to its standing, others that it also brings responsibility.
The vote lifts a cloud from the club’s reputation, as did a similar vote by the Athenaeum in 2002. These places are not hole-in-the-corner institutions. In my view, the Garrick’s influence on Britain’s public life has been overstated. But privilege and influence are perceived, and that has been enough to make the club’s membership vulnerable to public scrutiny. That vulnerability was evident in the embarrassment some members felt at seeing the issue discussed outside the club’s walls. It was as if misogyny was a vice that dared not speak its name.
This week, as a member in favour of admitting women, I could still appreciate the force of the opposing argument. Debate at the decisive meeting was dignified and moving. It was bound to be so, as it would be whenever elderly and longstanding members of any association discussed a change to an institution that had been so much a part of their lives. This would apply equally to a women’s club, a book club, a football team or a masonic lodge. Such affinity groups are the building blocks of a community. The terms on which they decide to change their rules are bound to concern members, and sometimes affect them deeply. I sympathise.
That is why the argument on the day was less about women as members and more about the procedure for any change to the rules. This is after all an argument that lies at the root of any democratic institution. What should be the process that legitimises change, who gets to vote, and how large does the majority need to be? Many organisations, indeed many nations, require a certain proportion of the electorate to be in favour in order to rewrite the constitution, as should have been required for the votes on Brexit and Scottish independence. How can a narrow majority on a single day be allowed to determine the long-term future of any country?
In the humbler case of the Garrick it was certainly not unreasonable to argue that a simple majority of members was insufficient for a fundamental change – if the arrival of women was indeed “fundamental”. As it was, the club decided otherwise. In the event the final majority in favour of the admission of women was almost 60%.
If any one principle underlies the working of a free society, it is freedom of speech and association. The Garrick is a private club and as such it should be entitled to decide for itself the basis of its membership. Whom to exclude should be a matter for the club and its members, not the state or the law.
That is the ideal. The reality is that institutions come in different shapes and sizes. Many professional associations – notably in medicine and the law – exert considerable power in Britain. They effectively “rule” their sectors of the public service, as the BMA, for example, dominates the medical profession. Private clubs sometimes do likewise. In the past great and even sinister power has been ascribed to France’s énarques (graduates of an elite university), America’s Ivy Leaguers and Britain’s Old Etonians. In each case it is not actual but perceived power that excites popular resentment. Where access is based simply on gender, that perception is hard to assuage.
The issue of excluding women from any associations will not go away, even if the anger varies in proportion to the privilege deplored. Other longstanding London clubs that still ban women – Brooks’s, Boodle’s, White’s, the Travellers, the Savile – seem to generate little resentment. They might plead that gender is a distinctive affinity, as do London’s few women-only clubs such as the University Women’s. To the mass of the population the prejudice shown by these clubs seems to arouse little anger, if only because of their perceived lack of influence.
Not so the Garrick. This may be no more than a minor triumph against gender discrimination. But in a small corner of England’s capital, women are at last to be welcomed on equal terms.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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