Jackie Walker suspended

Jackie Walker has been suspended from the Labour Party for saying that 'she had not found a definition of antisemitism [she] could work with' and, seemingly also for calling for the inclusion of other genocides in Holocaust Memorial Day celebrations (something that has already happened). Many people within the labour movement are applauding the suspension, including figures from its left-wing. In fact, a spokesperson for Momentum is reported as saying that the organisation is looking to exclude Walker - as a Momentum member myself, I am keen to know how this has been decided, who these spokespeople are, and to whom they are accountable. If nothing else, this sorry episode serves as a reminder that Momentum stands in urgent need of democratisation.

I do not support Walker's suspension. This will no doubt prove controversial, and that is entirely understandable. People are rightly worried about anti-Semitism on the left and in wider society, and do not want to be seen to be sitting lightly to this growing and grotesque racism. This case however stands at the complex intersection of two racisms and the internal politics of the Labour Party and deserves careful thought.

Jackie Walker, a lifelong and courageous campaigner against racism who has written a moving and very personal account of one woman - her mother's - experience of the Windrush migration, is herself of Jewish heritage. She has a consistent history of taking a stand against the far right and their targeting of Jews and other minorities. She is in no way an anti-Semite. In the current pressure cooker environment of the Labour Party that truth, which should be obvious, requires stating firmly. Does that make her comments wise? Not in my opinion, although I'll say something about context in a moment. Nor, however, were those comments anti-Semitic. To say something else that should be obvious, Walker's claim that she had not found a good definition of anti-Semitism is not an assertion that there is no such thing as anti-Semitism. And a context in which the charge of anti-Semitism is quite cynically and disgraceful being used as a weapon in the internal politics of the Labour Party, definitions matter. Nor does tactlessness or ignorance regarding Shoah commemorations constitute anti-Semitism. Jackie Walker is not a professional politician; mistakes made in a tense and hostile situation deserve to be treated with sympathy.

It matters, you see, who is speaking; the power relations which frame a context of speaking cannot be ignored. Jackie Walker is a black woman who has been subject to vicious invasions of privacy, press intrusion, and hostility in recent months. She is not a powerful person; she is an activist trying to work through the relationship between two racisms, each of which is not an abstract matter for her, but rather a threat to be both feared and fought. She was speaking to a hostile audience. This last point might not be obvious, indeed the suggestion that something called the 'Jewish Labour Movement' is a hostile audience might sound problematic in itself. Now, the Jewish Labour Movement is not, as its name might suggest, an organisation for all Jews within the labour movement. It is an affiliate of the World Labour Zionist Movement and an enthusiastic supporter of the state of Israel. Anti-Zionist Jews are effectively excluded from the organisation, which has a particular political agenda, and one to which Walker is opposed. Good socialists disagree about the issue of Israel, and I don't want to rehearse that particular debate now. But Walker was not amongst political friends, and was facing hostile questioning of a type she lacks the professional training to face.

The accusation of anti-Semitism is being mobilised by the right as a way of attacking Jeremy Corbyn and the movement that supports him. A dangerous and cynical tactic, this undermines the fight against anti-Semitism. The left should think very carefully before helping in this; we should at least make ourselves more sensitive to the possibility of alternative perspectives.