Jackie Walker (activist): Difference between revisions

Jacqueline Walker (born 1954) is a

Walker was in the National Youth Theatre but thought that as a black person she would get few roles so instead, she decided to train to be a teacher.^[8] Walker went to university and trained^[4] to become a teacher.^[3] In her first year, she married, had a baby, and returned to Goldsmiths College when her baby was six weeks old.^[8] She has also been and anti-racist trainer and charity worker^[8] with a long record of anti-racist activism and a long history as a political activist.^[9]

Walker completed an M. Phil, which examined the development of identity in the work of Black British writers. She has contributed to educational materials and written training manuals. She has completed two Arvon Foundation writing courses, and was awarded an Arts Council England grant to complete her memoir.^[7][10] In April 2008, Walker's family memoir Pilgrim State was published by Sceptre, which was placed on the reading list of the social worker training course at Brunel University London. Walker gave lectures at the university twice a week for the course. She was then on their committee for social work training.^[8][8] Walker staged a one-woman show, The Lynching,^[3][11] which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2017.^[2]

Labour Party

In 1981, Walker joined the

She was elected to Momentum's Steering Committee and, in September 2015, became its vice-chair.^[13] She is a founding member of Jewish Voice for Labour.

Atlantic slave trade Facebook comments

In May 2016, the Israel Advocacy Movement accessed Walker's private Facebook account. There, they found a discussion in which a pro-Israel friend of Walker's had raised the question of 'the debt' owed to the Jews because of the Holocaust. Walker then said:

Oh yes - and I hope you feel the same towards the African holocaust? My ancestors were involved in both - on all sides as I'm sure you know, millions more Africans were killed in the African holocaust and their oppression continues today on a global scale in a way it doesn't for Jews… and many Jews (my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade which is of course why there were so many early synagogues in the Caribbean. So who are victims and what does it mean? We are victims and perpetrators to some extent through choice. And having been a victim does not give you a right to be a perpetrator.^[14]

The Israel Advocacy Movement judged this comment to be anti-Semitic. They then contacted the media and the Labour Party leadership who immediately suspended Walker. The chair of Momentum, Jon Lansman, criticised the media campaign against Walker in an article entitled: 'A frenzied witch-hunt is not the way to combat antisemitism or any form of racism'.^[15] After an internal investigation, Walker's membership of the Labour Party was reinstated.^[16]

In response to her critics, Walker said:

Yes, I wrote 'many Jews (my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade'. These words, taken out of context in the way the media did, of course do not reflect my position. I was writing to someone who knew the context of my comments. Had he felt the need to pick me up on what I had written I would have rephrased - perhaps to 'Jews (my ancestors too) were among those who financed the sugar and slave trade and at the particular time/in the particular area I'm talking about they played an important part.' … [My claim] has never been that Jews played a disproportionate role in the Atlantic Slave Trade, merely that, as historians such as Arnold Wiznitzer noted, at a certain economic point, in specific regions where my ancestors lived, Jews played a dominant role 'as financiers of the sugar industry, as brokers and exporters of sugar, and as suppliers of Negro slaves on credit.'^[17]

Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust has argued that Walker's comments are reminiscent of the anti-Semitic views of the Nation of Islam. Walker's response to this argument has been to say 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.'^[18][19]

In May 2016, Walker was suspended from the Labour Party and reinstated about three weeks later.^[13]

Holocaust Memorial Day at Labour Conference

During the September 2016

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. In the [Labour conference] session, a number of Jewish people, including me, asked for definitions of antisemitism. This is a subject of much debate in the Jewish community. I … utterly condemn antisemitism... 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.'[20]

In September 2016, Walker was removed as Vice-Chair of Momentum, although a committee said she was not deemed to have made anti-semitic comments.^[13] In October, the Momentum Steering Committee decided that although it "does not regard any of the comments she appears to have made, taken individually, to be antisemitic. However, 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 then removed Walker from the post of vice-chair while stating that "Jackie should not be expelled from the Labour party."^[22][23]

In early October 2016, Walker was suspended from the Labour Party again with Labour's National Executive Committee referring her case to the party's National Constitutional Committee in March 2017.^[13]

A number of prominent left-wing activists have defended Walker, including film director

In 1997, she moved from Dorset back to Greenwich, London where she had lived with her mother to raise her three children on her own.^[9] In 2010, Walker moved from London to Broadstairs,^[9] Kent^[13] where she lives in with her partner, Graham Bash, who is editor of Labour Briefing and is also Jewish.^[24]

Walker has three children born in the 1980s. She has two sons from her first marriage and a daughter from her second marriage. Walker has an estranged elder sister, and elder brother and younger sister.^[8]

References