So, a coup for The Guardian. After publishing a list of the members of the male-only Garrick Club in much the same spirit as it might out members of the English Defence League, it has now got three members to resign. Simon Case, head of the Civil Service after telling a Commons committee that he only remained to force change in this “antediluvian” institution.
Sir Richard Moore, head of MI6, resigned after his outing in The Guardian was followed by “conversations with senior female colleagues”, and frankly if the head of the intelligence services can be browbeaten that easily, and doesn’t have the gumption to tell his colleagues where to get off, is he really right for his job? Don’t they have better things to do? I feel a little less safe knowing MI6 is in the hands of this weed.
Then there’s Sir Robert Chote, an economist in charge of the UK Statistics Authority, who also resigned — but you have to wonder, how was he elected? The Garrick is meant to be a fun place for actors mainly — and present and past members include Benedict Cumberbatch and Brian Cox — not statisticians sans backbone.
It’s interesting reading the argument of the interestingly named Amelia Gentleman on why she’s treating the Garrick as if it’s the Freemasons. She describes it darkly as “the central London club, with its billiard room, libraries, bars and multiple dining rooms, staffed by waiters in pristine white jackets”. What? Libraries? Bars? Eeek.
If Amelia Gentleman, daughter-in-law of Stanley Johnson, wife of former Tory minister (Lord) Jo Johnson, ex-Oxford, ex-exclusive St Paul’s school for Girls is a stranger to this ambience, I should be surprised. I should in fact be shocked if she’d never been to bastions of exclusion like the Atheneum or the Reform which share Garrick sins — the waiters! the multiple dining rooms! — except they’re for the privileged of both sexes.
Richard Moore has resigned his membership — I feel a little less safe knowing MI6 is in the hands of this weed
Let’s tackle this nonsense head-on. There is absolutely nothing wrong with single sex spaces for men or women. Men are entitled to hang out with other men away from the female gaze. They can slouch around and talk about men’s stuff. The dynamic of a place is subtly altered when women are around, and I’m not even going to bother making the point that the same is true of women and their safe spaces; take it from me.
My clubbable friend, Lord (Andrew) Roberts of Belgravia, who is a member of six clubs, including the Garrick, points out that “men behave slightly differently — not better nor worse, but differently — when women are present. There are only three rooms of the Garrick in which women are not welcomed, if one counts under the stairs as a room. Is that really so outrageous?”
But the real problem is, as he says: “‘Freedom of association is being trampled in the name of identity politics; in a free society men should be allowed to congregate together if they so wish.”
It’s a free country, but it’s that little less free if you can be turned into a social pariah by a national newspaper for doing nothing wrong.
It’s worse than that though. The most pernicious element of Gentleman’s article is the suggestion that male judges who are known to be Garrick members should not sit on cases dealing with rape, sexual violence or sex discrimination on the basis, according to one female barrister, that they are “prepared to tolerate discrimination and bias”.
You might as well say that any judge who’s been to private school, like Gentleman and her husband, should be excluded from cases involving working class offenders because their world view is inescapably coloured by class and money.
Trying to discredit judges because of their Garrick membership is going pretty low.
Simon Case and Richard Moore were bullied to resign their membership on the basis that it runs counter to the effort to include more women in the civil and intelligence services. But the Diversity, Equality and Inclusion drive is not an uncontested good. As Kemi Badenoch pointed out this week, it eats money and is often counterproductive. If this is the grounds for hounding men and only men for belonging to a club, it’s a cause of discrimination in itself.
But the real reason for distaste at The Guardian’s publication of the members’ list and the bullying of high profile men in it — Gentleman looks forward to others considering their position — is that it will tend to make society that bit more grey, more homogenous. Personally, I’m glad for the sake of the residual gaiety of the nation that mildly anachronistic institutions exist.
Now a bore called Emily Bendell, a fashion entrepreneur, is calling on the King to resign as a member as well as all other public figures. She had tried to become a member herself; hers is the animosity of the excluded. I’m not a member of a club but I should not join one that had her as a member. As I say, the Garrick probably shouldn’t have boring civil servants and parliamentarians as members — it should stick to thesps and journalists —and it should not be obliged to include fanatics. Go to Soho House, Emily (annual fee circa £3,000). They might have you.
This witchhunt is being conducted on behalf of women, but not in my name, ladies. The little freedoms of society are not to be undone for me. If the Garrick takes in men and only men it has zero effect on me — or on any woman.
