The men-only Garrick Club will vote on Tuesday evening on whether female members should be allowed to join, after decades of controversy over the London club’s refusal to admit women.
Members will meet at a Covent Garden venue at 5pm to debate the issue. They will then vote on a resolution inviting them to confirm that a new legal analysis of the Garrick’s 193-year-old rulebook suggests there is actually nothing in it preventing women from joining already.
The club’s membership of about 1,500 includes a roll-call of high-profile names from Britain’s still largely male-dominated establishment, including dozens of high court, supreme, appeal and circuit court judges, hundreds of senior barristers, dozens of politicians, heads of arts organisations, well-known actors, journalists and King Charles.
If busy members – such as the musician Sting, the actor Brian Cox or the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden – are unable to make their way to the venue, the event will also be broadcast online and members who cannot be there in person will be able to vote remotely.
It is not certain that the vote will comprehensively resolve the bitter disputes about whether the club should admit women. After the vote, all members have been invited to a dinner at the club’s greying, Italianate stone building near Leicester Square for a standup meal (there are expected to be more members than available chairs).
A stream of men wearing the Garrick’s signature salmon pink and cucumber green ties may be visible making their way through Covent Garden to the club shortly after 7pm. Members include politicians such as Jacob Rees-Mogg or Michael Gove, the BBC reporters John Simpson or Clive Myrie, the actors Matthew Macfadyen or Benedict Cumberbatch.
One pro-female member (asking for anonymity, because club convention requires members not to speak about the club) said: “It’s not clear whether the dinner will be a celebration or a wake.”
Members will be asked to vote to confirm a resolution “that the rules of the club allow the admission of women members”. The new interpretation of the rules rests on a legal technicality, not considered during earlier votes on the matter, suggesting that the club’s rules should be read with the 1925 Law of Property Act in mind, and consequently the word “he” should also be read to mean “she”, meaning there is nothing preventing women from being allowed to join, and that it was a mistake not to let them in earlier.
The vote confirming this resolution requires just a 50% majority, although previous votes on the question of female membership have always required a two-thirds majority.
This argument has been made by a handful of Britain’s most senior lawyers and judges (many of them members of the club) who have offered different bits of legal advice on the matter over the past year. Non-member David Pannick KC reviewed the club’s rules earlier this year and concluded there was nothing to stop women from becoming members immediately.
The former president of the supreme court David Neuberger and former supreme court judge Jonathan Sumption (both members) have written to the club supporting Pannick’s interpretation. Other lawyers disagree and members have been invited to consider nine different pieces of legal advice before voting.
Several amendments, believed to have been proposed by members who are not in favour of female members, will be voted on before the main motion. The first states that given “the outrage caused to many members by the attempt on the part of some members to use an unofficially procured and contested legal opinion to bypass the club’s long-established agreed practice of treating a proposal to admit women members as requiring a change of rule by a two-thirds majority”, it is very important that “every member of the club is given the opportunity to vote on a matter which has proved so controversial”. The amendment suggests the vote should in fact be a postal vote. If two-thirds of members voting agree, then today’s vote will be cancelled and a postal vote will follow.
Another amendment requests that the voting threshold is switched back from a 50% majority to a two-thirds majority.
Pro-female members have indicated that if members refuse this evening to approve women’s admission they will seek further legal advice, and will begin to nominate women as members anyway, in the belief that the rules suggest they can already join.
