Clubs: It’s a Class Thing

Would you want to join a club that would have you for a member? The simple idea of like-minded people coming together to relax and enjoy themselves seems harmless enough, but what if the private members’ club is more about who can’t join than who can? Last year, Seth Thévoz wrote a densely researched look at the secret life of London’s private members’ clubs, while Pete Brown claimed “clubland” as a working class concept, arguing that the working men’s club shaped 20th century Britain. In the festival’s second year at what was once the Mildmay Radical Club, Pete and Seth discuss the way in which the balance of power in Britain is negotiated in a leisure space as much as a work or political space.