Campaign news

Defend Jackie Walker

12th May 2016

Defend Jackie Walker

Suggested model motion for Party branches:

This branch wholeheartedly and unreservedly condemns all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. We further wholeheartedly and unreservedly condemn the suspension by the Labour Party of Thanet Labour Party member Jackie Walker for alleged anti-Semitism.

Jackie Walker is a longstanding member of the Labour Party, and was Vice-Chair of Thanet South Labour Party until her suspension. She played a key role in helping to organise the defeat of Nigel Farage, when he contested Thanet South in the general election 2015. She is an active anti-racism campaigner and a founding member of the Kent Anti-Racism Network. KARN has been organising for refugees stuck in the camps of Calais, and mobilising opposition to openly fascist groups seeking to stoke anti-migrant sentiment and community divisions in Dover.

We welcome Jeremy Corbyn’s initiative to hold a full inquiry into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. Any member who has made actually anti-Semitic comments should face immediate suspension pending an investigation. But care must be taken not to suspend members on a spurious basis, and that is what Jackie Walker’s suspension clearly is. Those who have been suspended on a spurious basis should be immediately reinstated.

Such suspensions are also a clear invitation to the Party’s enemies to use our procedures to damage our Party and its effective operation.
We call upon the National Executive Committee to lift the suspension immediately, to reinstate Jackie Walker and to apologise to her.

Background notes

Jackie Walker has been suspended following a complaint to the Labour Party from the Jewish Chronicle, reporting that an organisation called the Israel Advocacy Movement had uncovered remarks on Facebook made by her earlier this year. Those remarks, in the context of a discussion about the Holocaust and human rights today, were “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. 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.” Jackie Walker is of mixed African-Caribbean and Jewish heritage.

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