Thirty years ago today, El Vino, the celebrated Fleet Street wine bar, lifted its ban on women standing at the bar after a landmark Court of Appeal ruling. Solicitor Tess Gill and journalist Anna Coote won their case against the establishment, which had long confined women to a back room away from the bar, where they waited for table service.
The ban, believed to date back to the Second World War, was originally intended to prevent unescorted women of ill repute from picking up customers. The bar's owner, Frank Bower, known as the 'prime vintner of Fleet Street', maintained a strict dress code for men and held puritanical views about women at the bar.
In his ruling, Lord Justice Griffiths said El Vino's popularity among journalists made it one of the famous 'gossip shops of Fleet Street', and confining women reporters to the tables put them at a special disadvantage in 'picking up gossip of the day'. Days after the verdict, the bar lifted the lifetime ban it had imposed on the two women.
The victory followed years of unsuccessful challenges. In 1970, a group of female journalists marched into El Vino and demanded to be served, with Sun reporter Mavis Davidson declaring, 'Our money is equal so our rights must be equal.' They were sent back through the doors, and the protest was later mocked as a 'storm in a sherry glass'. In 1975, on the day the Sex Discrimination Act came into force, photographer Sheila Gray was refused at the bar; her subsequent lawsuit, backed by the Equal Opportunities Commission, also failed.
The Court of Appeal ruling proved that the Sex Discrimination Act could be a potent weapon against inequality. It startled an industry dominated by newsmen and was greeted by cheers in Fleet Street. Women rushed to El Vino to celebrate, prompting one exasperated bartender to exclaim, 'There are more women at the bar than men - it's chaos.'
