The former captain of a ladies golf club who was among a group of members expelled after one said that a breastfeeding mother “put her right off her food” has won an appeal against her dismissal.
Pam Nutting, 65, was one of three senior members at Whetstone golf club in Leicestershire who became embroiled in the row after a game last April.
Mrs Nutting, Lesley Bailey, the club’s competition secretary, and Janet Morris were forced out after being accused of “unbecoming behaviour”.
Golf England has found that the club acted in a “heavy-handed manner” in expelling Mrs Nutting and that the management had sought to make an example of her to “deflect any criticism they may have faced if they were seen to have taken no action”.
The decision followed an appeal hearing on January 29. Whetstone golf club has accepted the decision.
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Mrs Nutting, a retired post office manager, is considering suing the club to recoup the £2,000 legal fees she paid to a barrister. She has no intention of re-joining the club.
The row began when one of six mothers who were visiting the club started breastfeeding.
Ms Morris, who had been a member of the club for 28 years, claimed that she was confronted by one of the women after she had said: “Gosh, are we running a crèche?” The breastfeeding mother and her friends wrote to the club to complain. None of the women members would say who had made the remark about being put off their food.
David Raitt, the club’s owner, conducted an internal investigation and Mrs Nutting, who had been a member for 14 years, was expelled.
Mrs Nutting said that she had been made a scapegoat. “This whole thing has been a farce from start to finish,” she said. “The disciplinary hearing was like something out of the TV comedy Blackadder when there is the trial over who shot the pigeon Speckled Jim.”
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Mrs Nutting’s husband, Graham, 69, was seniors captain at the club and also quit after the dispute.
At the time Mrs Nutting said that the woman who was breastfeeding did not have a bra on and “lifted her T-shirt”.
Ms Bailey and Ms Morris both later resigned from the club. Ms Morris, 81, said that she was not against breastfeeding but that she was concerned about “decorum”.