Certainly one of London’s oldest, most celebrated males’s golf equipment, the Garrick, voted on Tuesday to confess ladies as members, in line with two members. The vote ended a decades-long dispute that had divided the membership, generated a number of conflicting authorized arguments and made life acutely awkward for a few of its most outstanding members.
The vote — by a margin of roughly 60 p.c to 40 p.c, in line with the 2 members — will open membership to ladies for the primary time because the membership’s founding in 1831. Some members had mentioned they deliberate to swiftly nominate a slate of outstanding ladies, together with the actress Judi Dench and the classics scholar Mary Beard.
The choice got here after the newest spherical of debate, often bitter, which pitted a band of dedicated campaigners in opposition to largely older members, a lot of whom had lamented that admitting ladies would endlessly change the character of the Garrick, a bastion of the British institution.
The membership didn’t touch upon the assembly, which lasted nearly two hours, or the outcomes of the vote, and the members requested to not be recognized as a result of that they had been requested to not talk about it. They mentioned the talk had been civil, and the vote, which was carried out electronically, had been carried out briskly.
The Garrick has lengthy welcomed ladies as company, together with at a communal desk within the majestic eating room within the membership’s imposing constructing in Covent Backyard. Nonetheless, ladies have been barred from the members’ lounge, often known as Underneath the Stairs, the place males collect after dinner to smoke and drink.
Whereas the Garrick will not be the one male-only membership in London, it’s simply essentially the most star-studded, with a membership roster that features the actors Brian Cox, Benedict Cumberbatch and Stephen Fry; the musicians Sting and Mark Knopfler; the BBC world affairs editor John Simpson; and Oliver Dowden, Britain’s deputy prime minister. King Charles III is an honorary member.
Mr. Cox and Mr. Fry had come out publicly in favor of admitting ladies. Final week, Mr. Simpson posted on social media that he and plenty of different members, together with Sting and Mr. Knopfler, would discover it not possible to remain within the membership if it didn’t vote to alter the foundations.
The final time the members voted on whether or not to confess ladies, in 2015, a slender majority — 50.5 p.c — mentioned they supported it. However on the time, the membership’s bylaws required a two-thirds majority to alter a membership rule. On Tuesday, the members voted, by a slender margin, to alter that threshold to a easy majority, in line with the 2 members who spoke on the situation of anonymity.
As the talk unfolded in latest weeks, some members appeared to have been swayed by a authorized opinion, written by an outdoor lawyer, David Pannick, which argued that nothing within the membership’s guidelines prevented it from admitting ladies. Mr. Pannick’s conclusion held on a authorized interpretation in English regulation that the pronoun “he,” additionally means “she,” until particularly stipulating in any other case.
An professional in human rights regulation, Mr. Pannick represented former Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier than a parliamentary committee investigating the scandal over events held at 10 Downing Road throughout the coronavirus lockdown.
Two membership members — David Neuberger, a former president of Britain’s Supreme Courtroom, and Jonathan Sumption, a former justice on the court docket — wrote letters in help of Mr. Pannick’s argument. However different members produced authorized opinions that reached very completely different conclusions, and people have been additionally debated in Tuesday’s two-hour assembly, which members have been allowed to attend remotely.
Those that opposed admitting ladies identified that London has a number of women-only social golf equipment, together with the College Girls’s Membership. There are additionally male-only golf equipment like White’s, which don’t even enable ladies to enter as company.
The extended dispute over feminine members, nonetheless, had develop into a humiliation to the members, notably senior authorities officers whose standing was disclosed in a listing leaked to The Guardian, the London newspaper.
Two senior British officers felt pressured to resign from the membership: Richard Moore, the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, and Simon Case, the cupboard secretary, who oversees almost half one million public staff.
Mr. Case had defended his membership by telling Parliament that he was making an attempt to reform an “antediluvian” establishment from inside reasonably “than chuck rocks from the skin.” Mr. Moore’s membership appeared at odds together with his efforts to deliver extra racial and gender variety to the British spy company, often known as MI6.
Different members have been vocal in opposing the men-only coverage, arguing that it ran counter to the spirit and values of the Garrick, which attracts outstanding individuals from the worlds of arts and letters.
