Reform Club
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The Reform Club was originally a private gentlemen's club on the south side of Pall Mall (at number 104), in central London. It has admitted ladies since 1981. In 1977 its subscription fees were among the highest in London.
It was founded in 1836 by Edward Ellice (1783-1863), a Whig whip, whose riches came from the Hudson Bay Company but whose zeal was chiefly devoted to securing the passage of the Reform Act 1832. The new club, for members of both Houses of Parliament, was meant to be a centre for the radical ideas which that bill represented; a bastion of liberal and progressive thought that became closely associated with the Liberal Party, which had largely succeeded the Whigs by the middle of the 19th century.
Brooks's Club, the headquarters of the old Whig aristocracy, was not prepared to open its doors to a flood of new men, so preliminary meetings were held in Ellice's house to plan a much larger club, which would promote "the social intercourse of the reformers of the United Kingdom". When a Liberal Member of Parliament "crossed the floor" to join or work with another party, he was expected to resign from the club. The Club no longer requires any particular political view of its members, and is purely social.
Until the decline of the Liberal Party, it was de rigueur for Liberal MPs to be members of the Reform Club, which almost constituted another party headquarters, although the National Liberal Club, formed under William Gladstone's chairmanship, was established in 1882, designed to be more "inclusive", and was geared more towards Liberal grandees and activists in the country.
The building, like its neighbour the Travellers Club, (number 106), was designed by Sir Charles Barry and opened in 1841. The new club was palatial, the design being based on the Farnese Palace in Rome. The Reform was one of the first clubs to have bedrooms, and its library contains some 50,000 books, mostly political history and biography.
With the decline of the Liberal Party in the mid-20th century, the club increasingly drew its membership from civil servants in the Treasury, as a counterpart to the neighbouring Travellers Club, which became synonymous with Foreign Office officials.
It is used fictionally in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days; the protagonist, Phileas Fogg, is a member of the Reform Club who sets out to circumnavigate the world on a bet from his fellow members, beginning and ending at the club.
Michael Palin, in imitation of his fictional predecessor, also began and ended his televised journey around the world in 80 days at the Reform Club.
Its members have included:
- H.H. Asquith
- Hilaire Belloc
- Guy Burgess
- Sir Menzies Campbell
- Winston Churchill, who resigned in 1913 in protest at the blackballing of a friend, Baron de Forrest.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Sir Charles Dilke
- Edward Ellice (1783-1863)
- E. M. Forster
- William Ewart Gladstone
- William Harcourt
- Sir Henry Irving
- Henry James
- Roy Jenkins
- David Lloyd George, who resigned with Churchill over Baron de Forrest's blackballing.
- Lord Palmerston
- Stella Rimington
- Lord Rosebery
- William Makepeace Thackeray
- Jeremy Thorpe, who was expelled in the 1970s
- H. G. Wells
[edit] See also
- Lejeune, Anthony, with Malcolm Lewis, The Gentlemen's Clubs of London, Bracken Books, London, 1979 (reprinted 1984 and 1987), ISBN 0-946495-14-9
- Burlingham, Russell & Billis, Roger (eds), Reformed Characters. The Reform Club in History and Literature. An Anthology with Commentary (London, 2005)
- Woodbridge, George, The Reform Club 1836-1978. A History from the Club's Records (London, 1978)
[edit] External links
- Reform Club website
- http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=40611 [Survey of London's entry on the Club]
