Yesterday’s post was about the recent Guardian articles on the all-male Garrick Club in London’s theatreland.

It should be noted that the Garrick is far from being the only prestigious all-male private members club in London, just the best known.

Well, it seems that pressure from The Guardian and those against single-sex private clubs — don’t forget, there are several exclusively for women, too — has forced two Garrick members to leave the club. They are top civil servants.

On Wednesday, March 20, 2024, the paper reported (emphases mine):

The head of the civil service, Simon Case, and the MI6 chief, Richard Moore, have resigned their memberships of the Garrick Club after intense criticism of their decision to join a club that has repeatedly blocked the admission of women as members.

Their resignations come two days after the Guardian published for the first time details of the club’s closely guarded membership list, revealing that fellow members include judges, scores of senior lawyers, leaders of publicly funded arts institutions and King Charles.

The moves by Case and Moore are likely to put pressure on other high-profile members of the club to rethink their membership.

Case, who as cabinet secretary is the leader of half a million civil servants, had faced condemnation for arguing he only joined the London gentleman’s club in an attempt to overturn its all-male policy. The Cabinet Office confirmed on Wednesday afternoon that Case had resigned his membership.

It is understood that Moore, chief of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, decided to quit the Garrick after criticism from colleagues at MI6, which has repeatedly restated its commitment to improving the service’s poor record on equality and diversity.

Moore is understood to have written to all MI6 staff twice within the space of 24 hours. The first message, sent to thousands of its employees on Tuesday morning, addressed the Guardian’s coverage and acknowledged the reputational hit that news of his membership posed to the service, and in particular the risk of it undermining its work to attract more women to join MI6.

In that note, he said he would not be resigning because he was campaigning from within the club for women to be allowed to join.

But at 9am on Wednesday he sent a shorter note to staff saying that on further reflection overnight he had decided to quit the Garrick, the Guardian understands.

He is also understood to feel mortified at the attention surrounding his club membership because it has detracted from MI6’s work to address the under-representation of women. The resignation followed conversations with senior female colleagues.

What can one say? Should pressure also be brought to bear on women who have joined clubs allowing only members of that sex? Are there female civil servants who are members of such organisations? Perhaps we should be told.

As for women not joining MI6, has spying ever appealed to them? There are certain walks of life that attract more men than women and vice versa.

I recall 20 years ago when the male head of the Networks department — as in computer networks — in the consultancy at which I worked was desperate to hire more women. He got permission to place a prominent advertisement in the British IT weeklies. Response came there none. He was seriously disappointed.

One suspects that the same principle applies to MI6. Spying and intelligence gathering might not be something to which females naturally gravitate.

We need to learn to live with that — just as we need to accept that the Garrick and other single-sex member clubs, whether for men or women, exist.