How the Victim of Jeremy Newmark’s racist campaign came out on top
Jackie Walker was Vice Chair of Momentum when she was suspended from the Labour Party in May 2016. During a private conversation with a friend she had stated that ‘many Jews, my ancestors too, were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade… so who are the victims and what does it mean .’ Jackie missed out one word ‘among’ as in ‘among the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade.’ [see The lynching of Jackie Walker, Open Democracy, 12.10.16]. For that she was attacked as an anti-Semite.
The
reason Jackie was targeted was not because of one word but because she was a
Black-Jewish anti-Zionist. In May 2016 there was massive support for
Jackie in the Labour Party and Momentum. Even Owen Jones supported
her and within less than a month she was reinstated.
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| The Jewish Labour Movement withdrew its invitation to a meeting because McDonell has spoken on a platform with Jackie Walker |
However
the Jewish Labour Movement, the British branch of the racist Israeli Labour
Party, a party that openly believes in segregation and Jewish supremacism,
didn’t give up so easily. At the TUC Conference in Brighton in September Jackie
spoke on a platform with John McDonnell. When McDonnell was
announced as a speaker at a JLM meeting at Labour Party conference, there
were calls for him to be disinvited for speaking on the same platform as
Jackie. The Jewish Chronicle quoted
Jeremy Newmark, Chair of the JLM as saying that McDonnell ‘"must explain his defence of Walker which is
inconsistent with his call for zero tolerance. This raises serious questions.
Our members expect him to explain himself.’
 |
| The above tweets are just some of the vile abuse sent by Zionist 'victims' of antisemitism |
On
September 17th, over a week before the Labour Party conference, I
wrote a blog The Jewish Labour
Movement and its Political Lynching of Jackie Walker. I
had picked up on the increasing attacks on Jackie by the JLM and to me this
seemed a classic case of a political lynching. It was clear to me
that the Zionists were pushing for a resuspension of Jackie. What was happening
to Jackie would not have happened to a White person. The JLM had
deliberately targeted Jackie and made her into the classic
scapegoat. Its supporters indulged in the vilest racist abuse,
something that crooked Labour General Secretary Iain McNicol was quite happy to
turn a blind eye to. No one has ever been disciplined for abuse of
people on the Left. Only right-wing MPs are victims.
According
to the Jewish News of 14th June 2017, ‘the title [The
Lynching] is a reference to an article by Marxist commentator Tony
Greenstein, who wrote: “The attacks on Jackie Walker and others are political,
a determined effort by the Israel lobby to make Britain’s Labour Party safe for
Israel and Zionism.” I am proud to have been the source of the
title of this profound and moving play which describes the visceral racism
employed in defence of the world’s only Apartheid state, Israel.
At
the 2016 Labour Party Conference Jackie attended a ‘training session’ on
anti-Semitism run by the Jewish Labour Movement. She was recorded
saying that she hadn’t found a definition of anti-Semitism that she could work
with. A pretty uncontroversial statement. She also stated
that it would be nice if Holocaust Memorial Day could include all
holocausts including those of Africans who had died in the slave trade or as
slaves in the West Indies. These remarks were secretly recorded by
the Jewish Labour Movement and immediately there were loud calls to suspend
Jackie for ‘anti-Semitism’. This time there would be no support from
Owen Jones or Jon Lansman. On the contrary Lansman went out of his
way to support Jeremy Newmark in his campaign of vindictive
persecution.
 |
| This wealthy property developer and founder of Momentum has followed a Zionist agenda in Momentum, always seeking to give legs to the false anti-semitism campaign |
In The Independent of
30.9.16. Lansman leapt to the defence of the corrupt racist
Jeremy Newmark, Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement. Lansman threw
Jackie, his deputy in Momentum to the wolves for the sake of his Zionist
friends.
‘“I spoke to Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement this morning, he’s very upset and I can understand that – I work closely with Jeremy, I’ve been meeting with Jewish organisations to talk… I’ve been outspoken. I was very, very unhappy about… and I did comment on it, about it, what she had previously said.
 |
| Picket of Momentum Executive Committee which Stabbed Jackie Walker in the Back |
On
October 3rd 2016 Momentum’s Steering Committee met at the TSSA
Headquarters near Euston and voted by 7-3 to remove Jackie as Vice Chair of
Momentum. The meeting was picketed by
Free Speech on Israel. Unsurprisingly Iain McNicol then followed up
by suspending Jackie for a second time as a result of Lansman’s racist
scabbing.
What
makes Lansman’s actions particularly despicable is that the false anti-Semitism
campaign which had netted Jackie Walker was a campaign whose primary purpose was
to remove Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party. Lansman was
acting as a fifth column within Momentum. The Alliance for Workers
Liberty’s Jill Mountford and Mike Chessum, voted with Lansman to remove
Jackie. The AWL would soon be removed from Momentum’s Executive
Committee too when Lansman decided to
destroy the democracy of Momentum.
Go
and watch this play it is very moving and describes the racism that Jackie has
experienced in Britain not least in the Labour Party from careerists and
opportunists such as Momentum’s property developer dictator Jon Lansman.
Tony
Greenstein
Riri Hylton The Electronic Intifada 4 April 2018
Jackie
Walker (James Tye)
Two
years after being purged from the Labour Party over spurious anti-Semitism
allegations and a successful run of performances in the UK, Jackie Walker is
touring Europe with her one-woman show.
The Lynching of Jackie Walker, an
autobiographical piece, was borne out of a political crisis in Britain’s Labour
Party. Following the election of Jeremy Corbyn,
an outspoken critic of Israel, as party leader, accusations of anti-Semitism
within the party’s left have been on the rise.
Former
vice-chair of Momentum, the left-wing group formed to support Corbyn, Walker –
who is of Jamaican and Jewish descent – was an early target.
“They
wanted a lynching, a political lynching,” she states in the play’s trailer. “So I thought I would
get my own court of public opinion and you’re going to be that for me tonight.”
 |
| Jeremy Newmark - the corrupt Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement who led the witchhunt of Jackie Walker |
Walker
was eventually cleared of
charges of anti-Semitism only to be suspended again
after she was secretly filmed
challenging a controversial definition of anti-Semitism at a
Labour Party training session. The head of the Board of Deputies of British
Jews recently called for
Walker’s expulsion from Labour.
The
anti-racist activist draws a clear connection between a resurgence in the
radical left and the accusations levied against her.
“You
can see this in programs like Al Jazeera’s The Lobby. Suddenly the
establishment began focusing on anti-Semitism – which does exist – to both beat
and confine the left,” she tells me, referring to an undercover
investigation exposing how pro-Israel groups influence British
politics. “I think they’ve found it an effective tool.”
It
is a tool that has since been used against many other Labour Party members,
including Glyn Secker,
secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour; Black anti-racist activist Marc Wadsworth and
Israeli anti-Zionist Moshe Machover.
The
Lynching is both allegorical in its treatment of
political persecution and something of a clarion call for the masses. A
non-linear narrative weaves together pluralities of voice, history and
location, finally arriving at the present, an alarming mirror of the past.
Concerned
for the most part in another period of social upheaval, Walker attempts to
situate her particular “lynch” in a broader historical process. “This has all
happened before, as my mother says [in the play]. This is a technique that the
right use against the radical left whenever they need to button us down.”
Alarming
mirror of the past
The
play begins as Walker navigates the crowd towards an unadorned stage with a
whiteboard, stool, table and coat stand. A photo of Walker’s mother, Dorothy
Walker, is held in place on the board and on the coat stand hangs the brown
trilby hat of Jack Cohen, Walker’s father.
Walker
has a forceful yet disarming presence. She morphs from one character to
another, employing a simple prop, turn or other sharp movement. The ghost of
Dorothy speaks in a patois lilt and brings a fierce historical wit. She is both
witness and public defender, traversing disparate geographical locations as she
builds a case.
“Tonight
you will hear about a witch-hunt, about fake news, alternative facts and an
attempt to smash the biggest, most radical political movement we’ve ever seen,”
she begins. It will become clear throughout the course of the performance that
the play is as much about the vindication of a mother as it is her daughter.
The
first act details the courtship of Dorothy – a Jamaican civil rights activist –
and Jack – a Russian communist Jew – in 1940s Brooklyn. Their involvement, at
first romantic, quickly matures. “It was music that brought us together, but it
was in the politics where we found love,” states a nostalgic Jack.
Political
activity – such as boarding buses as a mixed-race couple in the segregated
South – attracts attention from the state and Dorothy is finally thrown out of
the country, but not before a period of solitary confinement at a psychiatric
hospital, where she is forced to give birth tied to a bed.
Such
tragic stories are, however, punctuated by moments of laughter and Walker
inhabits her mother with a true warmth, in a script littered with bitter
anecdotes:
“Jamaica
– a paradise. When white people get there for the first time, they say they
discover it, they call it tabula rasa. That mean empty page.
Perhaps they were blind because there were thousands of Indians living there,”
she offers mockingly.
The
Lynching is awash with historical reference. It traces
the ghoulish picnics held at lynchings in the deep South and the founding of
slave plantations in colonized Jamaica before crossing the Atlantic, where the
Walker family is met with the “No dogs, no Irish no coloreds” signs of 1950s
Britain.
Once
in England, we encounter an 8-year-old Jackie who experiences a series of
flashbacks, disrupting the narrative with short vignettes of troubling tales.
Neo-Nazi attacks on the family home, racist slurs in the school playground and
physical attacks color the stage, each scene interrupted by a lullaby.
Dorothy’s
death marks another abrupt interruption in the play. An overwhelmed infant
Jackie tells the story in short, simple sentences, shifting from past to
present tense. “I went to sleep really quickly. But then, suddenly the light
went on. And my mum can hardly breathe. I don’t remember how she got to the
floor.”
Once
at the hospital and following a post-mortem diagnosis, the child determines the
real cause of death. “I remember what my mum told me and I think she died
because she was poor and sick. Poor and sick and colored.”
From
this emerges a present-day Walker, who begins detailing life in the years
following her mother’s passing. It’s a sobering moment marked by its
unvarnished, matter-of-fact delivery. Bleak irony is replaced by more somber
observations: “I left care at 18, same way I came into Britain, with a suitcase
and £25.”
An
attack on change
After
a brief sketch of her time in the Labour Party, grassroots activism and
election to vice-chair of Momentum, we are brought to the present-day allegations.
A
damning statement by the state prosecutor leads to the re-emergence of Dorothy
Walker, who gives a detailed rebuttal of each charge. “Wake up!” she appeals,
“we have seen this before. This is not an attack on Jackie Walker. This is an
attack on change.”
Walker
makes a compelling case in the mirroring of her and her mother’s struggle, and
this bears fruit in the final act. “What I’m trying to do in the play is to get
people to have a historical view of what is happening at the moment,” she
explains.
“This
new anti-Semitism, which equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, is one
of the major tools they’re using to try to fracture and break us.”
The
Lynching possesses a sirenic, almost shamanic quality,
alerting us to the dangers of collective amnesia, offering the role of witness
as its salve. The final scene of Dorothy and her daughter attest to this.
Eight-year-old
Jackie stands center stage and describes a dream where she is visited by her
mother. The two sit at the top of a hill and the child describes her Christmas
meal among other things.
The
mother begins to float slowly away toward the clouds as she says goodbye,
leaving behind a tearful daughter, who resolves to remember.
And
it is in this quiet love of memory that The Lynching triumphs.
Riri
Hylton is a freelance journalist/editor working in both print and broadcast
journalism. They are based between London and Berlin.
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