Jackie Walker

Jacqueline Walker (born 10 April 1954) is a British and American political activist and writer. She has been a teacher and anti-racism trainer. She is the author of a family memoir, Pilgrim State, and the co-writer and performer of a one-woman show, The Lynching. She held the roles of vice-chair of South Thanet Constituency Labour Party and vice-chair of Momentum before being suspended and ultimately expelled from the party for misconduct.

Background

Walker has described her family background in both her family memoir, Pilgrim State, and her play, The Lynching as being of mixed Jewish and African descent. According to Walker, her mother, Dorothy Brown, was a black Jamaican and Sephardi Jew who was descended partly from a Portuguese Jew who came to the West Indies during the days of Christopher Columbus, and a female slave who converted to Judaism on marriage. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1915, she won a scholarship to study medicine in the United States, where she married and had a daughter, giving up her studies. In 1949, she was committed temporarily to a mental institution, where was on occasion held in isolation, placed in a straitjacket and subjected to ECT treatment, by her husband, who was seeking to end the relationship. Her eldest daughter was put into care and was ultimately fostered while her second child was returned to her on her release. Later, her mother attempted to retrieve her elder daughter but without success. Released, and active in the civil rights movement, she met Walker's Ashkenazi Jewish father, Jack Cohen, whose family fled anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire around 1918 and came to New York, where he became a jeweller.

Walker was born in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City in 1954. In 1956, her mother, with Walker and her step brother, were deported to Jamaica, which Walker attributes to McCarthyism.

Walker completed an M. Phil, in which she examined the development of identity in the work of Black British writers. Having completed two Arvon Foundation writing courses, she was awarded an Arts Council England grant to complete her family memoir Pilgrim State, published by Sceptre in April 2006. It was placed on the reading list of the social worker training course at Brunel University London, where Walker gave bi-weekly lectures and was a member of the committee for social work training. She has contributed to educational materials and written training manuals on anti-racism.

Labour Party Walker joined the Labour Party in 1981. She was elected to Momentum's Steering Committee, becoming its vice-chair in September 2015, and is a member of Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL). On 27 March 2019, Walker was expelled from the Labour Party for "prejudicial and grossly detrimental behaviour against the party". She nonetheless retained her JVL membership.

First investigation In Walker's Facebook account, a private discussion from February 2016 was recorded in which a friend of Walker had raised the question of 'the debt' owed to the Jews because of the Holocaust. In the discussion, Walker had responded:

Dave Rich has argued that Walker's comments are reminiscent of the Nation of Islam's antisemitic views on the role of Jews in the slave trade. Walker's response has been that 'the Nation of Islam is an antisemitic group which seeks to set Jewish and Black people against each other. Any examination of my work, my writing, my life, would make clear my opposition to this ideology.'

Second investigation During the September 2016 Labour Party Conference, Walker attended a training session on antisemitism for party members held by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM). Her remarks at the meeting led to her second investigation by the party.

Jeremy Newmark, the chair of the JLM, said after the meeting that Walker had acted "to denigrate security provision at Jewish schools" when, at the meeting, she said "I was a bit concerned by your suggestion that the Jewish community is under such threat that it has to use security in all its buildings. I have a grandson, he is a year old. There is security in his nursery and every school has security now. It's not because I’m frightened or his parents are frightened that he is going to be attacked." After the meeting, she said: "I did not raise a question on security in Jewish schools. The trainer raised this issue, and I asked for clarification, in particular, as all London primary schools, to my knowledge have security and I did not understand the particular point the trainer was making. Having been a victim of racism, I would never play down the very real fears the Jewish community have, especially in light of recent attacks in France." She has also said, following the meeting, "I would never play down the significance of the Shoah. Working with many Jewish comrades, I continue to seek to bring greater awareness of other genocides, which are too often forgotten or minimised. If offence has been caused, it is the last thing I would want to do and I apologise." and Noam Chomsky who said "I wholeheartedly support the right of anyone to criticise Israel without being branded antisemitic. That goes in particular for Jackie Walker."

Facing a threat of losing support from the TSSA trades union, Momentum removed Walker as vice-chair, while retaining her as a Steering Committee member, with the Committee stating that, although it "does not regard any of the comments she appears to have made, taken individually, to be antisemitic... the Committee does consider her remarks on Holocaust Memorial Day and on security of Jewish schools to be ill-informed, ill-judged and offensive. In such circumstances, the Committee feels that Jackie should have done more to explain herself to mitigate the upset caused." The Committee stated that "Jackie should not be expelled from the Labour party."

Later that month, Walker was suspended from the Labour Party pending investigation, for a second time, with Labour's National Executive Committee referring her case to the party's National Constitutional Committee.

Talk shows and films In March 2017, Glasgow Friends of Israel and Labour Against Antisemitism failed to prevent her speaking on Palestine: Free Speech And Israel's "Black Ops" at Dundee University. A similar event at Aberdeen University was cancelled after the invitation to speak was withdrawn. Labour Against Anti-Semitism described her talk as "part of an increasing normalisation of anti-Semitic hate speech that has to be confronted and eliminated" and that it "threatens the safety of Jewish students" and therefore the university was "failing in its duty of care". Walker responded that there was a difference between being pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic, and that she and her partner were Jewish.

Walker also performed in a one-woman show about her experience, The Lynching,

Walker was extensively interviewed in The Lobby, the 2017 TV series by Al Jazeera about some of the pro-Israel organisations and individuals active in the United Kingdom.

In September 2018, the Jewish Voice for Labour sponsored a premiere of the documentary film The Political Lynching of Jackie Walker which was to have been presented while the Labour Party Conference was being held nearby. The audience of 200 people had to be evacuated after a bomb threat. In a statement, Jewish Voice for Labour said the film "is an incisive and chilling exposé of attempts to silence critics of Israel, in particular those who support the socialist project of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. It connects the global struggle against racism and the far right with the Palestinian cause."

Another film, on the accusations of antisemitism against Walker and others following the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, entitled Witch Hunt, premiered in Broadstairs on 3 February 2019. In the same month, the Board of Deputies of British Jews complained to the Labour Party about Chris Williamson MP, for booking a room to enable the showing of the film in Parliament. A Labour spokeswoman said of Williamson's action: "It's completely inappropriate to book a room for an event about an individual who is suspended from the party and subject to ongoing disciplinary procedures." The screening was cancelled, which the film's promoters said was due to intimidation.

Activism and political views As a young woman, Walker was active in the anti-apartheid movement.

Walker is a founding member of the Kent Anti-Racist Network and Labour Against the Witchhunt. She has said that "Opposition to a Jewish state is, and remains, a legitimate, honourable political position and one that many, including many Jews, have stood by for decades".

Walker supported Jeremy Corbyn during his period as leader of the Labour Party. She said Corbyn had opposed racism, war, injustice and oppression all his life and called his leadership "the greatest challenge to the established political order the UK has seen for some time". She said the mainstream media and the right of the Labour Party had weaponised anti-Semitism to attack Corbyn. Walker was raised as a Catholic for part of her childhood.

She has an elder sister, an elder brother and a younger brother. She has three children.

In 2010, Walker moved from London to Broadstairs, Kent where she lives with her partner, the editor of Labour Briefing, Graham Bash.