Garrick Club takes first step to admitting women members

The Garrick Club is a step closer to admitting women members following a historic decision by the club’s general committee on Thursday.

The committee accepted the legal opinion of Lord Pannick KC that women are already eligible to join the exclusive club.

Lord Pannick, a British barrister and a crossbencher in the House of Lords whose opinion was commissioned by several members of the club, has said that the pronoun ‘he’ is interchangeable with ‘she’ in the law, meaning the club’s current rules already allow women to join.

The club’s committee passed a motion to accept the opinion at the meeting on Thursday evening.

It means the matter will now pass to an extraordinary general meeting in which all 1,500 members of the club will be given a vote on whether to accept the opinion.

One committee member said following the meeting: “We decided to accept the legal advice of Lord Pannick. That will then be ratified by a meeting of the whole membership.”

Another member, who was not at the meeting but had spoken to someone on the committee, said: “There’s going to be an extraordinary general meeting where all the members will vote.

“It’s all up in the air. I don’t know what’s going to happen there.”

Membership still an uphill struggle

The move to put the proposal to the membership is one of the most significant steps in the club’s nearly 200-year history and could pave the way for women to be admitted for the first time as full members.

Currently they are only allowed to enter the club if invited and accompanied by a man.

One of the women nominated for membership welcomed the committee’s decision. “That’s fine by me,” she told The Telegraph.

A friend of one of the women put forward by Garrick Club rebels for membership reacted enthusiastically to the news.

Insiders say supporters of women’s membership still face an uphill struggle, as two thirds of the existing membership would have to vote in favour.

Although 51 per cent favoured women membership in an online poll a few months ago, the response rate was 75 per cent, meaning the two thirds majority had not been reached in that instance.

The prominent seven

Members of the club sparked the rebellion by nominating seven prominent women including Dame Mary Beard and Amber Rudd as members, putting forward the women’s names to Friday night’s committee meeting.

Dame Mary, a television presenter and professor of classics at Cambridge University, said she was delighted to have been proposed for membership.

“The Garrick is a great club and I have enjoyed being a guest there and I would very much like to be a member,” said Dame Mary. “I am being put forward although I shan’t be suing them if I don’t get it.”

Emily Maitlis, the broadcaster, posted a list of women last week she said were being proposed, adding on X, formerly Twitter, that she had seen their names in a “formal letter”.

She said the other women on the list were Amber Rudd, the former home secretary; Baroness Hazarika, the journalist and political adviser; news presenter Cathy Newman; the actress Juliet Stevenson; Margaret Casely-Hayford, a former City lawyer and chair of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre; and the former Court of Appeal judge Dame Elizabeth Gloster.

Maitlis said the women had been nominated by members of the club including the actor Stephen Fry, a number of senior KCs, and the journalists Sir Simon Jenkins and Simon Heffer.

Dame Mary confirmed that she had been nominated by Professor Heffer and Sir Simon.

The furore over the Garrick’s men-only rule was prompted by the publication of its membership list by The Guardian newspaper, leading to the resignation of some members including Sir Richard Moore, the MI6 chief, and Simon Case, the head of the Civil Service. Four senior judges are also said to have quit.