WOMEN fighting for equality in the male-dominated world of the working man's club have once again had the door slammed in their face.

Their latest effort to win the right to full membership of WMCs was rejected at the annual meeting of the Club and Institutes Union (CIU).

But the motion to allow them to join was lost by only a tiny majority - 52 votes out of 1,300.

Although disappointed by the result, campaigners for equality of the sexes in WMCs insist it is only a matter of time before they succeed.

Among those speaking up for women at the Blackpool meeting was John Bacon from Northallerton WMC.

He urged delegates to drop the 100-year-old rule and said: "If we continue to ban women, we deny the clubs valuable additional members and funding."

In March, Jackie Medley, 57, secretary of the Bishopthorpe Social Club, York, lost her complaint of sex discrimination against the CIU at a London tribunal.

However in reaching its finding, the tribunal panel said the CIU's rules did "not adhere to the spirit of the sex discrimination laws"

Mrs Medley, who was in Blackpool, warned: "Tradition is a great thing but if you don't modernise, the clubs will close. If every lady in the country who goes into clubs stopped going, the clubs would not survive. It's demeaning to me that I'm secretary of my club but I have to be escorted in by a man."

If the motion had been passed, women would have been given the right to purchase associate cards and pass cards to workingmen's clubs, enabling them to visit any club without being signed in as a guest.

They would also have been able to stand for election to the local branch committee and national executive.

Current CIU rules state that women can be "lady members" of clubs, but not associate members.

The 1,300 CIU representatives from around the country cast their votes at the men-only meeting at Blackpool's Winter Gardens. Representatives from the North-East have, in the past, been strongly opposed to such a move.

A two-thirds majority was needed to pass the motion, which had been proposed by the union's national executive. The majority reached was 63 per cent.

Following the meeting, general secretary Kevin Smyth said: "It now looks inevitable that in one or two years they will vote in favour of the motion. It's a case of when, not if."