The Garrick: unfit for the modern world?

So, The Guardian has achieved another coup, said Melanie McDonagh in the Evening Standard. Last week, Amelia Gentleman – the journalist who exposed the Windrush scandal – named 60 prominent members of the male-only Garrick Club, outing them in much the same spirit as one might out members of the English Defence League. 

Those found guilty of the crime of liking to socialise with other men in a grand building in central London include senior politicians (Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg), dozens of judges and KCs, a few A-list actors (Brian Cox, Benedict Cumberbatch) and a handful of leading figures from the arts world. 

Nonsense excuses

That clubland is exclusive is hardly news; nevertheless, the report caused such a fuss that some men have felt obliged to resign from the Garrick. Civil Service boss Simon Case tried to tough it out, claiming to a Commons committee that he had joined the club in order to reform it from within. Richard Moore, head of MI6, came up with a similar line. But both then caved in.

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Of course, their excuses were nonsense, said Boris Johnson in the Daily Mail. No one joins the Garrick to reform it; they join because they're excited to be admitted to an elite club and think it's a congenial place. I should know: I was briefly a member once, and was thrilled to find myself rubbing shoulders with my "journalistic heroes" – including the BBC's John Simpson, and Alan Rusbridger, then editor of The Guardian. If I had been asked, I would have voiced support for reform. But I don't think the Garrick's members should be bullied out of their "quaint" traditions.

'Hidden spaces' where connections are made

The classic defence is that it's just more relaxing for men to socialise without the presence of the opposite sex, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. And the Garrick insists that it is a purely social environment: work is prohibited. But while it would be fanciful to suggest that powerful men are running the world from its oak-panelled rooms, it is surely one of those "hidden spaces" where vital connections are made, old school ties are reinforced and favours exchanged.

The real problem, though, for the public figures on the Garrick's membership list, is that choosing to spend your evenings in a club that reeks of the unreformed establishment, and which actively bars women, is at odds with your job leading modern diverse organisations and government departments. It's more than two decades since the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith rejected honorary membership of the Carlton Club because it didn't admit women. What on earth are all these politicians, judges and civil servants doing in such a place, in 2024?