One of London’s last remaining gentlemen’s clubs, the Garrick, has taken the highly unusual step of expelling a member, amid rising tensions over the club’s unwillingness to change its men-only membership rules.
Former theatre producer Colin Brough, a member for 40 years, was expelled from the club after sending a series of angry emails to fellow members expressing his conviction that women should be admitted immediately.
The strongly worded emails criticised the club’s “Putin-style” management, accused the club’s committee of thwarting the desire of a majority of members to admit women and claimed organisers of a poll on how members felt about women joining were biased.
He was summoned to a meeting with the Garrick’s chairman on 1 February, charged with “conduct unbecoming of a gentleman” and formally expelled from the club.
The long saga of the Garrick’s refusal to admit female members attracts regular interest because its membership includes a roster of influential establishment figures and household names. Current members include actors Stephen Fry, Hugh Bonneville and Brian Cox as well as the levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, and many judges, including the former president of the supreme court David Neuberger.
The backstory to the expulsion involves allegations and counter-allegations of “ungentlemanly” behaviour (prohibited by club rulebook), and touches on the etiquette of circulating unsolicited emails to fellow members (in contravention of a club bylaw).
In a letter to Brough confirming his expulsion, the club’s chair, Christopher Kirker, wrote that the decision had “nothing whatsoever to do with your personal views on the admission of women to the club”, adding that the move came in response to “personal, unsubstantiated and defamatory ad hominem attacks” on two fellow club members.
The offending emails focused on the club management’s refusal to share with members a revised piece of guidance written by a senior barrister on the legality of continuing to prevent women from becoming members.
Michael Beloff KC, who had initially advised the club in 2011 that its rules prohibited female members, decided in November 2022 that he had made a mistake in his original advice and wrote new guidance concluding there was no legal justification for excluding women. He added that the club was likely to face “an expensive lawsuit” if it continued to bar women.
Beloff notified the club’s management of his error and sent them revised advice, but this guidance was not shared with members before a November 2023 poll on attitudes towards admitting women. Of those members who participated in a postal vote, 51% indicated that they were in favour of admitting women, while 44% were opposed, but the club needs a two-thirds majority to trigger a rule change.
In one of several long emails, which were copied to dozens of fellow members, Brough accused some management figures of being “against women members, which is why they have, in my view, taken such an active and belligerent role in preventing the membership from reading, considering and assessing for themselves the importance of the Beloff opinions”.
He also accused members of the club’s management of deception, added that the club contained a group of “misogynists [who] want to keep women out” and said the Garrick was becoming a “pariah” because of its attitude to women.
One email attacking a second member of the club’s administration is not focused on female membership but on whether payment for dinner should be made before or after a meal. Nevertheless, most of the offending emails express frustration that the club would be damaged by failing to change its membership rules.
Brough wrote that some fellow members had admitted nervousness about the potential “reputational damage” they would face if it emerged publicly that they were members of a club that banned female members.
He quoted a supportive message from Fry, who acknowledged he felt “ashamed and mortified by the continuing exclusion of women from our club”.
Fry’s email continued: “I fear that I’ve been lax about either resigning, campaigning or making any kind of a noise about this. It’s a mixture of indolence and reluctance to get involved in fusses, allied with a natural incompetence at and fear of political infighting, committees, round robins and all the antagonism and heat they generate.”
Previous attempts to force the club to allow women have been unsuccessful. When Joanna Lumley was proposed as a member in 2011, prompting the club to take legal advice on the issue, some members scrawled expletives on her nomination card, and one wrote: “Women aren’t allowed here and never will be.”
The Garrick was contacted for comment.
