Stifle your yawns, at the mere mention of a “legal textbook”. If you want to rapidly understand how a club is run, then these are often the very best way to do it, short of spending years running a club of your own.
Managing a club can feel like a lonely task for professional management and voluntary committees alike. They are often acting in isolation, with the most obvious yardstick being to their own club in the past, when things may have been done very differently. Yet legal textbooks not only offer top-to-bottom guidance on every aspect of club management, but a wealth of legal precedents and case histories which add up to healthy, practical Do’s and Don’t’s. Foolish is the club secretary or chair/president who does not keep an eye on these publications.
And these books continue to evolve, as Clubland cases continue to hit the courts. (A recent example being the Lansdowne Club, taken to the High Court last year by an expelled former member, with the court ruling in the Lansdowne’s favour.)
Club legal textbooks are nothing new. The first English legal textbook specifically about clubs was published a century and a half ago, as by Arthur F. Leach, Club Cases: Being Considerations on the Formation, Management and Dissolution of Clubs, with Especial Reference to the Liabilities and Expulsion of Members (London: Harrison, 1879); and it was followed by other textbooks on unincorporated associations more broadly.
The very fact that such books were published stands testament to the stratospheric rise of clubs in the Victorian period - and their tendency to disputes which ended up resorting to the courts for resolution. As the wordy subtitle to the 1879 book suggests, Victorian London was just as prone as today’s clubs, to ambitious but short-lived club ventures, which would collapse amid acrimony, debt, and blurred liability. And from these early beginnings, there has always been a demand for more guidance, from simple legal compliance, to more detailed “best practice” recommendations and templates.
What follows below focuses on the clubs of England and Wales - so while there are plenty of legal textbooks covering other jurisdictions (such as Clayton Barrows and Michael Robinson, Club Management: The Management of Private Membership Clubs (Pittsburgh: Goodfellow, 2018), focusing on the US clubs), I would like to look at some recent English and Welsh legal textbooks which I can recommend.
David Ashton, Paul W. Reid and Ian Snaith, Ashton & Reid on Clubs and Associations, 3rd edition (London: Bloomsbury Professional, 2020).
Rightly regarded as a Clubland Bible, Ashton & Reid on Clubs and Associations has been published since 2005 (originally as Ashton & Reid on Club Law, with a second edition under the revised title in 2011, and the third edition in 2020). Clocking in at 574 pages, it could scarcely be more comprehensive, and is bursting with resources. In addition to being as steeped in as many legal precedents as you would expect in a book of its type, it contains some invaluable resources in the appendices, including model rules for different types of club.
And nothing is left out. There are sections covering almost every conceivable eventuality, including formation and dissolution of a club, admission, management, cessation and curtailment of membership, property ownership, alcohol, food, gaming, entertainment, tax, and liability in civil and criminal proceedings. It is exhaustive - and filled with wisdom.
All three authors have had extensive, but distinctive, experience in dealing with clubs: Ashton as a barrister and chartered arbitrator who was the Kennel Club’s long-serving counsel; Reid as a barrister, recorder and former counsel for the National Golf Clubs' Advisory Association; and (joining them in the third edition) Snaith as a solicitor and law journal editor.
The latest edition has still been overtaken by events in some respects, most notably with regards to how equality law has been interpreted and enforced by the courts in recent years (even if there has been no major change in legislation). Nevertheless, it is about as up-to-date as can be found - indeed, it was so up-to-date that at the time of publication in 2020, the latest edition even featured the then-latest Covid regulations. Short of the expense of formally commissioning new legal advice, the best start on any given issue may well be to see what guidance is offered by Ashton & Reid.
Kerry Barker and Henry Stevens, Club Law Manual, 2nd edition (London: Wildy, Simmonds and Hill, 2011).
Not as up-to-date as the latest edition of Ashton & Reid, but still admirably clear and concise, is this textbook. The original edition, edited by licensing barrister Kenneth W. Pain, was (like Ashton & Reid) first published in 2005 as a timely response to the previous year’s implementation of the Licensing Act 2003. This legislation had a number of far-reaching implications for clubs, not least the creation of a Club Premises Certificate, which replaced a volley of previous licensing arrangements for differing aspects of a club’s business. While a Club Premises Certificate is not the only licensing route available to clubs - commercial, for-profit clubs tend to favour a Premises Licence, similar to a pub - it has become the favoured arrangement for England’s member-owned clubs.
Barker and Stevens edited the updated edition in 2011, which took account of the Equality Act 2010. The textbook’s scope is similar to Ashton and Reid, but the emphasis is more on club licensing arrangements - with extensive discussion given over to the appeals process around that - and less to the internal conduct of a club’s affairs, a topic on which Ashton and Reid have more to say.
Philip R. Smith, Club Law and Management (London: Association of Conservative Clubs, 2008).
Philip R. Smith and Charles Littlewood, Club Law and Management: Questions and Answers (London: Association of Conservative Clubs, 2017).
Few people alive in Britain today know more about the practical side of club management than Philip R. Smith. Lord Smith of Hindhead (as he now is) is the long-serving Chief Executive, and now Chairman, of the Association of Conservative Clubs, having worked for them since 1987.
Technically, the ACC’s remit is that of working men’s clubs affiliated with the Conservative Party, rather than ‘elite’ St. James’s Clubs. But the legal basis on which the ACC operates is much the same; and in the course of running this federation of over a thousand clubs (the largest in the UK), there are few scenarios Lord Smith has not encountered.
The two books should very much be read in conjunction. Club Law and Management was his succinct handbook for effective club management, based on the previous two decades of experience. Its sequel Questions and Answers volume offers a selection of answers by Smith and his then-deputy (and now successor CEO) Charles Littlewood in their long-running Q&A column from the ACC’s Conservative Clubs Magazine. This has the advantage of being rooted in real-life scenarios; and their answers often focus on how typical or atypical a query might be, and which variant issues may be involved.
Nicholas Stewart QC, Natalie Campbell and Simon Baughen, The Law of Unincorporated Associations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Unincorporated associations are strange beasts - “the most anomalous group of human beings that is known to the law”, according to one court judgement. And not all clubs are unincorporated associations (many are incorporated, typically as companies, but sometimes with a Royal charter). Nevertheless, a great many clubs are (or contain) an unincorporated association. Stewart, Cambell and Baughen shed light on the multiplicity of issues around these, and the applicable case histories. Like the previous titles, this is particularly invaluable for the lay reader.
You can view the full and varied backlog of Clubland Substack articles, by clicking on the index below.
Index
Articles are centred around several distinct strands, so the below contains links to the main pieces, sorted by theme.