Private clubs may use race as bar

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33141, 3 February 1973, Page 15

Private clubs may use race as bar

(N.Z.P.A -Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, February 2. Britain’s private clubs can go on refusing memberships on grounds of race, the nation’s highest court ruled yesterday. The decision included the London gentlemen’s clubs, some of the most exclusive establishments in the world for the last 300 years. Many of these clubs, bastions of the rich, the famous and the aristocratic, were pointedly warned by a lower court decision 13 months ago that they could no longer maintain a colour bar on membership applications. That ruling was reversed yesterday by Britain’s highest court — five judges as “law lords” in the House of Lords. The law lords decided, 4 to 1, that "a refusal to elect to membership on the ground of colour would not be unlawful.” Private clubs, they said, did not provide goods or services to the general public and therefore did not come under the 1968 Race Relations Act barring racial discrimination. The club controversy had been an important test of the act. Mr Amarjit Shah, a postal worker who immigrated from India 10 years ago, was refused membership in an East

London Conservative Party Political Club. He charged racial discrimination under the 1968 act, and the case went all the way to the Court of Appeals, Britain’s second highest court. That court ruled that clubs could not discriminate on grounds of colour and the Judge, Lord Denning, specifically warned that the decision applied to the exclusive London gentlemen’s clubs. Even Lord Denning’s ruling, however, left the clubs important loopholes. Although he disallowed colour bars, he said that private clubs could still turn down membership applications on grounds of educational background, social standing or personal achievement. The law lords, in reversing: Lord Denning, made it even; easier for the clubs to remain' exclusive. The real test, they said, was whether membership was a mere formality or not. If so. they ruled, the club was open to the public and the Race Relations Act applied. If not, it was a private club outside the scope of the act. The major loser in the case was Mr Shah, aged 27, who started the whole thing. He was denied the club membership he sought and ordered to pay the club its court costs for the appeal.