On a side street in Covent Garden stands a striking palatial building, oddly out of place among the burger shops and neon marquees of London's theater district. His Garrick Club is one of Britain's oldest men's clubs, and on weekdays, baronial dining in his room, his table is one of the hottest tickets in town.
Visitors who are lucky enough to secure an invitation from a member may end up joining a Supreme Court judge, an Oxford master's degree, or a London newspaper editor. That person is probably a man. Women are excluded from Garrick membership and are only allowed as guests, a long-simmering source of tension that has recently escalated into a full-blown flare-up.
Two senior British government officials have resigned from the club after London newspaper The Guardian shined a new spotlight on Garrick's men-only policy, naming and shaming some of its rarest members from a leaked membership list. did. Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary who oversees the Secret Intelligence Service and nearly 500,000 civil servants.
Just days ago, under questioning at a Congressional hearing, Mr. Case defended his own members and faced ridicule, saying he was trying to reform an “ancient” system from within, “rather than stoning it from the outside.” invited. Moore's membership appeared to be at odds with his efforts to introduce more racial and gender diversity into Britain's spy agency, known as MI6.
Today, the club's 1,300 members enjoy Garrick's dining room over lamb chops in the dining room, after-dinner drinks in the lounge under the grand staircase, and exchanging irritating messages about the latest developments in a WhatsApp group. We are discussing the future. Some welcome the push for long-overdue recognition of women's rights. Some lament that doing so would change the character of the place forever.
“The Garrick Club has an absolute right to decide who is a member,” said Simon Jenkins, Guardian columnist and long-time member and former editor of the London Times. . “However, it is indefensible for social clubs these days to exclude women from membership.”
“Judi Dench, why shouldn't she be a member?” he added.
Or award-winning former theater director Jude Kelly. Ms Kelly, who now runs the charity Women of the World, believes that by excluding women from Garrick's membership, she has no access to elite social circles, where professional opportunities inevitably flow with Brandy. said that the women had been robbed of their rights.
“We are in 2024,” Kelly said. “These are incredibly older people. Many of them support diversity and inclusion in their professional lives. If you stay inside for a long time, you become complicit.”
The Garrick Club isn't the only private club in London that doesn't allow women. The Whites, Boodles, Beefsteak Club and Savile Club are also exclusively for men. But what makes Garrick unique is its star-studded membership list that spans the worlds of politics, law, art, theater and journalism.
Members include actors Benedict Cumberbatch, Brian Cox and Stephen Fry, according to a leaked list from the Guardian. Mark Knopfler, guitarist of the rock band Dire Straits. Fashion designer Paul Smith. BBC correspondent John Simpson. Oliver Dowden, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. And yes, Charles III (honorary).
The bold names add further fuel to the controversy, especially since many of them appear to be bigoted progressives who abhor any discriminatory policies. Indeed, Mr. Cox, Mr. Fry, and Mr. Simpson are among those who have publicly expressed support for the inclusion of women.
The last time members voted on this question in 2015, a slim majority (50.5 percent) said they supported the question. However, the club's bylaws require a two-thirds majority vote to change membership policies, meaning a new vote, if planned, will not take place until the summer. Club officials declined to comment on the matter.
Although members have various concerns about not allowing women in, some predict that the two-thirds standard will still not be met. Perhaps inevitably, this debate was fierce, pitting a handful of dedicated campaigners against a larger group of elders. Many of them welcome women as guests, but are reluctant to shake up a ship that has been sailing with great success since 1831.
In New York City, private clubs such as the Union League and Century Association began admitting women in the 1980s, often under pressure from legal rulings. But in London, where clubs like the Garrick are keen to be social organizations rather than professional networking institutions, advocates argue it is more legitimate to maintain male-only membership. are doing.
These members say they go to Garrick to drink wine, relax and have fun. They tell jokes they would never do in a mixed company. They are not allowed to do business. Even taking documents out of the briefcase is looked down upon.
Some dismissed it as a storm in a teapot. Jonathan Sumption, a lawyer and former Supreme Court justice, said he supports admitting women, but added that those who oppose it have a right to be heard.
“The Garrick Club is not a public institution and this whole issue is too unimportant to make a fuss about,” Mr Sumption said. “It's still a pretty good club.”
Columnist Jenkins agreed, suggesting that some of the coverage caricatured Garrick as a somehow sinister place where men conspired against women. He said women are also welcome at the dining room's communal table, perhaps the club's most sacred space.
The only room that women are not allowed to enter is Under the Stairs, a members-only lounge where men gather after dinner. But as Kelly and other women have pointed out, the most valuable relationships are often built in these informal settings.
In that respect, The Garrick differs from Whites, St. James's more exclusive men's club, where Queen Elizabeth has been the only woman invited as a guest. When President Donald J. Trump's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Robert Wood Johnson IV, had lunch on-site with her senior staff, she was unable to invite her own political advisers because she was a woman. Ta. Female embassy employees complained to the State Department, prompting him to end the practice.
But white people and their Tory-leaning old-school wing “tend to be in the upper echelons of the Conservative Party, where they don't have a problem,” said Alan, a former Guardian editor who left Garlic more than a decade ago.・Rusbridger says. .
“Garrick members are a mix of actors, journalists and lawyers,” he said. “So that's a better question.”