The Daily Telegraph - Features
One squeak from the Guardian and the MI6 boss caved in
Two prominent members have quit the Garrick Club amid an outcry over its men-only policy. Were they too hasty,
On the face of things, the revelation this week that senior members of the British establishment were members of the all-male Garrick Club should not have come as a huge shock. Their memberships were mostly lying in plain sight, or at least in Who’s Who.
Besides, wasn’t the whole point of the Garrick to provide a haven for the great and good away from the prying hoi polloi? Its all-male nature might be out of time, but it was not major news.
That is what Simon Case, cabinet secretary and head of the Civil Service, and Richard Moore, the head of MI6, appeared to think, too. When The Guardian published a list of the Garrick’s members, on which both men featured, neither of them resigned. Not at first, anyway. Moore sent a forelocktugging email to his staff explaining that he knew his membership of the Garrick was problematic, but he thought it was better to stay on and try to vote to include female members.
Case said something similar, arguing at a cross-party committee that he wanted to “reform [the club] from within.” His colleagues guffawed.
By Wednesday, however, both men had performed ignominious U-turns. Moore wrote to his staff again, saying that he had decided to resign after all. He might spend his days fighting terrorist organisations, but when it came to Guardian-reading members of his own staff, he caved at once. On Wednesday afternoon the Cabinet Office confirmed that Case had resigned, too.
How could either man purport to support diversity in their organisations, their critics chorused, when they retreated to all-male sanctuaries at the weekend? Robert Verkaik, author of Posh Boys: How English Public Schools Ruin Britain, encapsulates such outrage: “In the Civil Service, it must be galling to know your boss meets other members of the team in a dining club that excludes you because you’re a woman,” he says. “I would find that extremely offensive. How did Simon Case and Richard Moore ever think that was a good idea, given MI6 and the Civil Service’s policies on diversity and inclusion?”
The Garrick never set out to be a bastion of the establishment. When Samuel Beazley and Samuel James Arnold founded it in 1831, naming it after the great 18thcentury actor David Garrick, they wanted to create somewhere actors would not be thought of as lowly. The club’s purpose was to be somewhere “actors and men of refinement” could meet on “equal terms”, and “tend to the regeneration of the Drama”.
Lawyers, who tend to have deeper pockets than actors, came later, as did the club’s de facto role as a legal clubhouse.
Now the question is whether members of the bench will have to follow where the nation’s top spy and civil servant have led – out the door. After all, Baroness Hale, who was president of the Supreme Court until 2020, has long been a thorn in the club’s side.
In 2011 she said she thought it was “quite shocking that so many of my colleagues belong to the Garrick Club, but they don’t see
what all the fuss is about.” In another interview, she said: “My objections to the Garrick is not to a men-only club. It’s to judges being members of a men-only club.
“They wouldn’t dream of being members of a club that excluded people from ethnic minorities [or] a club that excluded gays, but for some reason they seem to think it’s OK to be members of a club that excludes women.”
It is the Garrick’s unique position among all-male clubs, with one foot in the real world, that is the source of its present difficulty. “I think for clubs like Whites or Boodles, weirdly enough, it’s less of an issue,” says one clubland insider. “Because if you do go to these spaces, they are terribly aristocratic, with lots of hereditary peers, but who have no role in public life. They’re a group of sometimes interesting but utterly unimportant people. What makes the Garrick newsworthy is how central it has been to the legal profession for so long.
“You could probably advance a similar argument about the Travellers Club, because of the concentration of ambassadors and diplomats.”
Among the arts and media members of the Garrick, too, he adds, some present critics with a more substantial target than others.
“I don’t think it’s fair to go after someone like Hugh Laurie or David Suchet,” he adds. “They’re successful but they are just an actor. On the other hand, when the head of the Royal Opera House is a member, or senior figures at the BBC are members, that’s interesting.
“You could see the hypocrisy of saying ‘I believe in these principles in my day job, but I socialise in an environment that’s different’.”
The Garrick’s fiercest opponents go even further. Verkaik, for one, feels that club membership ought to be a matter of public record. “Sometimes I feel like its government and shady deals being done in smoke-filled room which are not necessarily serving the interests of democracy.
“It’s an aspect of the Government that needs to be out in the open.”
Correspondents to this paper, such as Christian Liedtke, adamantly deny such conspiratorial talk. “Critics,” he writes, “are mistaken to say that clubs like the Garrick are skulland-bones type havens of stringpulling and networking.” And there are many members who quietly wonder if Case and Moore have been, well, a bit wet to give in to pressure and head to the exit so compliantly.
All concerned are aware that this week’s events may represent a turning point. One by one, the old men-only clubs have been admitting women, even places like the Carlton.
In June, the Garrick is expected to have another vote on admitting female members. After years of pressure, the latest furore could be the thing to get it to the two-thirds majority needed for reform. But if men in public positions can no longer keep their memberships, what does it mean for the other all-male clubs that depend on their business?
They will be following the Garrick fallout closely. Men with high-profile jobs will be reviewing their subscriptions, wondering if anything sits uneasily with their employer’s diversity and inclusion policy. Crisis in clubland or storm in a teacup? Whatever happens next, the Garrick’s founders should be pleased: their club has certainly generated some drama.