A group of more than 60 lawyers in England and Wales have called on all judges who are members of the men-only Garrick Club to resign from it immediately, claiming membership is “incompatible with the core principles of justice, equality and fairness”.
In an open letter, the barristers, solicitors and legal professionals say they have been concerned by recent reports in the Guardian naming dozens of senior figures in the judiciary as current members of a club that has repeatedly blocked attempts to allow women to join.
The letter, organised by the barristers Charlotte Proudman and Elisabeth Traugott, and whose other signatories include Michael Mansfield KC and Leslie Thomas KC, says: “The Garrick Club, along with its associated ethos, embodies a social and gendered ideology that starkly contrasts with the reality of the modern courtroom. It stands as a symbol of an entrenched anti-woman tradition, comprising predominantly white male membership.
“We are concerned that membership perpetuates systemic discrimination against women within the highest echelons of societal influence. Maintaining membership at the Garrick Club is fundamentally incompatible with the core principles of justice, equality and fairness, particularly for senior members of the judiciary who significantly shape jurisprudence on gender-based discrimination and inequality and gendered crimes of violence and abuse.”
The letter notes that efforts to improve the judiciary’s poor diversity record have had limited success. “Female judges remain a minority, particularly women of colour, despite efforts to increase greater diversity and inclusivity,” it says. “We therefore ask that any judge, whether they are a full-time member of the judiciary or fee-paid, resign their Garrick Club membership with immediate effect.”
The letter represents further fallout from the Guardian’s publication of the names of key British establishment figures who are listed as members of a club that has been resisting moves to open up membership to women since the 1960s.
On Wednesday the head of the civil service, Simon Case, and the head of MI6, Richard Moore, performed sudden U-turns and quit the club, 24 hours after indicating they planned to remain.
The Garrick has always been known as a club where senior barristers and judges congregate, alongside actors and leading figures from the arts, but the full extent of the club’s ties with the judiciary has never previously been set out.
The roll-call of members of the UK’s legal profession who belong to the Garrick includes a serving member of the supreme court, about 150 leading barristers, five appeal court judges, eight high court judges, dozens more serving and retired judges, a former president of the supreme court, current and former ministers in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and numerous senior solicitors.
Although club rules prohibit the discussion of business, these guidelines are understood to be regularly flouted.
Christopher Bellamy, a Conservative peer and parliamentary undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Justice, is a member, alongside his Conservative colleagues Robert Buckland and Michael Gove, both former justice secretaries, and the former attorney general Dominic Grieve. Buckland said this week that the club was a place where members socialised and business was not discussed.
Separately from the open letter, Karon Monaghan KC, a barrister specialising in equality and human rights law, has written in a comment piece for the Guardian that “judges being members sends a message, including to female lawyers and judges, that powerful places are manly places”.
She said she believed judges who were members of the club should not be presiding over cases where sex or gender was a focal point in the case – for example, in discrimination cases or sexual and domestic violence cases.
“If they cannot trust women to sit with them in the clubby corridors of power, we cannot trust them to do the right thing by women. Advocates must now seriously consider whether in some cases it might be appropriate to ask a judge whether he is a member of the Garrick and, if so, to ask that he recuse himself so that justice can be seen to be done,” she wrote.
Judicial guidelines in England and Wales do not prohibit judges from being members of such clubs, in contrast to the US federal code of conduct for judges, which states that they “should not hold membership in any organisation that practises invidious discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion or national origin”, and which adds that such membership “gives rise to perceptions that the judge’s partiality is impaired”.
The first female president of the UK supreme court, Brenda Hale, repeatedly raised concerns about the club during her tenure. She said in 2017: “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.”
• This article was amended on 22 March 2024 to remove the name of one lawyer who had erroneously been included on a supplied list of signatories to the letter.
