Is it really so abominable to belong to an all-male club like the Garrick?

We’ve got to stop the madness of trying to bleach out all that’s odd and eccentric in society

COME on, guys, what happened to you? It’s always sad when people give in to bullies, but there was something particularly tragic about the Garrick Three.

one day, these triple pillars of the establishment were stoutly defending their ancient right to be members of an all-male club.

The next day, they crumpled like wine-sodden napkins on the floor of the Garrick dining room. They resigned, recanted and renounced their former allegiances in a manner reminiscent of a tearful scene from the Chinese Cultural Revolution — and it’s not as if these mandarins are normally the sort to fold under pressure. We are talking here about the head of the British Secret Service, a man I know and greatly respect.

He is trained to be James Bond. He has the psychological toughness to endure the most brutal and degrading interrogations our enemies could devise. He can go for hours being * bastinadoed by Rosa Klebb in the basement of the Lubyanka and he won’t give away his colleagues or their operations or even his own codename.

And yet when his cover was blown as a Garrick member, Sir Richard moore went back to the SIS office in Vauxhall, to talk to some female members of staff — and within half an hour, he had capitulated.

SO DID the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, as did Sir Robert Chote, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority — each of them issuing pitiful statements in which they threw in the sponge and acknowledged the error of their ways. I have no doubt that others will follow. more and more will resign, not because they want to, but because they feel exhausted, abashed and, frankly, unable to fight the tornado of wokery.

A witch-hunt will pursue all Garrick Club members in any kind of public position — from actors to lawyers to newspaper editors — as if they were members of some kind of terrorist organisation rather than a club that has existed for 193 blameless years.

As they resign, they will issue the same kind of halting excuses as the three mandarins. of course I didn’t like it, they will say of the men-only policy. of course I disagreed. I just thought it was better to fight it from the inside.

It is particularly painful to listen to these lame attempts at self-exculpation — because we all know it is nonsense. They weren’t members of the Garrick Club because they were all secret feminists who wanted to subvert it from within, and fight a guerrilla war for female members.

They were members because they were jolly proud to be elected and because they thought that it was really a rather congenial place. I don’t blame them for that emotion, my friends. I know just how they feel — because I must confess: I was once a Garrick member myself.

I remember my amazement when I got the letter, thinking that there must be some mistake, or practical joke.

Wow, I thought, because I was then a humble drudge, an editor of a weekly magazine. The Garrick Club! I knew that some of my greatest journalistic heroes were members — giants like Frank Johnson and John Simpson of the BBC, and, of course, Alan Rusbridger, paragon of liberal virtue, then midway through his marathon stint at The Guardian. It seemed to me that this club stood not for complacency and privilege — but was rather a celebration of energy and talent.

It was named after david Garrick, the great actor, who travelled all the way from Lichfield to London in 1737 in the company of that other self-made genius, Samuel Johnson — the two men taking it in turns to ride their only horse.

So I went a couple of times, rather bashfully, and enjoyed the wonderful pictures on the walls, and the wine, while a few of the other members — probably judges — gazed at me with a ruminative air. I admired the place; I liked it and was pleased to have been elected. After a few years, though, I decided that it just wasn’t for me. I really wasn’t going there enough to justify the fees and thought that there must be other people — given the pressure on numbers — who would make better use of the membership than me, so I resigned.

I did vaguely think that it was odd that they didn’t have women, and if you had asked me, I would certainly have said that women should be admitted.

But I didn’t feel very strongly on the matter, and it certainly wasn’t why I resigned. What I do feel strongly is that it should be up to the members of the club to decide their rules and that there should be no shaming and fingerwagging and general stigma about their choice.

I don’t know about you, but I feel we have had enough of this attempt to claim that the sexes must be always and everywhere completely interchangeable.

An old colleague and friend of mine is today in Scotland, where she is joining a protest against new SNP legislation to make it a hate crime to say what she happens to think: viz. that your sex is determined biologically rather than by some sudden personal declaration and that, on the whole, chaps who are born chaps should not be allowed into spaces that are by convention reserved for women.

I appreciate that this is a tricky area and it is always important to be kind to people’s feelings. But she is at least entitled to her sincerely held beliefs — probably shared by the vast majority of the population — and she should not be criminalised for repeating them aloud.

BY THE same token, it seems to me, the men of the Garrick Club are entitled to their quaint traditions. Is it really so abominable to belong to an all-male club? I am told that there are at least five clubs in London that are reserved for women only — and why not? No one, as far as I know, is trying to get rid of them.

So why persecute the buffers in the Garrick? We are in danger of trying to pasteurise our society, to bleach out all that is odd or eccentric, from some misplaced fear of giving offence.

I expect that one day the Garrick Club members will quietly sort it out and decide to admit women. Indeed, there seems to be some doubt as to whether the rules actually forbid female membership at all, even now.

As I say, I am sure, if I were still a member, I would vote for the change. It is just horrible to see the bullying and the way a harmless tradition is turned into something for public shame and reproach.

I believe the great Rusbridger was once in charge of Lady margaret Hall, a fine oxford college that was at one time reserved for women. How long before he has to appear again before the wrathful undergraduates and issue a tearful apology for his * quondam Garrick membership?

How long before The Guardian prints a front page apology for having been edited by men-only-club-backing Rusbridger?

Let’s all calm down and stop the madness. The Garrick is a great club and a wonderful British institution, and if people don’t like its rules, there are plenty of other clubs they can join.