The bar has made significant progress combating discrimination in the legal profession, but there’s some way to go yet. It’s not just our female colleagues who are concerned about barristers’ and judges’ membership of the Garrick Club (Legal profession’s most powerful among members of London’s men-only Garrick Club, 19 March).
It is a tradition at the bar that after a long trial with numerous defendants, a case dinner is held to which defence, prosecution and judge are invited. This reinforces the idea that we share a joint loyalty to the principle of justice that overrides our individual loyalties to clients. Recently a colleague was arranging just such a dinner, to be held at his club – the Garrick. He seemed genuinely surprised when I and others, including female barristers, declined to attend because we would not feel comfortable enjoying the hospitality of such a discriminatory institution. Surely my eminent legal friends can grasp the simple concept that if you don’t want look like you are sexist, you should not join a club that is institutionally sexist.
Paul Keleher KC
London
• How many members of the Garrick Club have judged discrimination cases? It seems that some of those at the top of the legal profession don’t understand what discrimination really is, despite being in a position to judge and determine outcome. So Dickens was correct – the law definitely is an ass.
Petrina Stevens
Charlton-All-Saints, Wiltshire
• While I sympathise greatly with the views expressed by those interviewed for your article (‘It isn’t acceptable’: Garrick Club remains a bastion of male elitism, 18 March), I wonder why such outrage should be reserved for this particular example of gender isolation. Single-sex schools survive in the UK in the 21st century, contributing to the enculturation of a significant part of the population in the belief that it is, overall, beneficial for boys and girls to be separated from each other in their formative years.
Why the surprise, then, when this entrenched belief carries over into a club like the Garrick? Until the UK abandons single-sex schooling completely, these clubs will survive because their members have learned early on that “serious work” is best done when they are isolated from members of the opposite sex.
Fiona MacArthur
Cáceres, Spain
• The disheartening revelations about the Garrick Club show how embedded nepotism and sexism are in our society. How do so many powerful men see fit to join a club that affords them privileged connections at the expense of women? But even if women are belatedly granted membership, we still have a problem. Secretive membership of exclusive clubs, especially when this includes people in public office, is highly conducive to corruption. The British, still steeped in our class system, seem to have a blind spot here. We must look to the example of other countries and bring in rules that thwart the privileging of privilege, and that instead privilege transparency, accountability and equality.
Dr Elly Hanson
Clinical psychologist
• We shouldn’t only focus on the exclusion of women, but remember why such clubs exist. They perpetuate exclusivity based on privilege, wealth and power. For the few, not the many. Allowing women to be members won’t change any of this. I’m a woman, but they’d never let me in ’cos I’m a nobody.
Dee Northover
Bristol
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