Jackie Walker (activist) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Jackie Walker
Born	Jacqueline Walker (1954-04-10) 10 April 1954 (age 70) Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, United States
Citizenship	British-American
Alma mater	Goldsmiths College
Occupation	Teacher, writer, anti-racism activist, charity worker
Years active	1981–present
Notable work	Pilgrim State, The Lynching
Title	Vice-Chair of Momentum
Term	September 2015 – October 2016
Successor	Cecile Wright
Political party	Labour (1981–2019; suspended 2016; expelled 2019)
Partner(s)	Graham Bash
Children	3
Parent(s)	Jack Cohen (father) Dorothy Brown (mother)

Jacqueline Walker (born 10 April 1954) is a British 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 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 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. There, racial discrimination barred her mother from many jobs, and she had to leave her children with relatives for months while she travelled looking for work. In 1959, Walker's mother, with her children, moved to London. Family life was characterised by abject poverty, cramped, squalid and chaotic living conditions and continual racist attacks, despite her mother's best efforts: as a result, Walker and her step brothers spent time in care homes or with foster families. She was the only black child in her primary school and suffered from racial bullying both at school and when in care. When Walker was 11, her mother died at the age of 50, after which Walker lived in care homes and was then permanently fostered.

Career

Walker was in the National Youth Theatre but, as she thought that as a black person she would get few roles, went instead to Goldsmiths College and trained to become a teacher. In her first year, she married and had a baby, returning to her studies when her baby was six weeks old. She worked as a teacher at a pupil referral unit for emotionally and behaviourally disturbed young people.

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 been an anti-racist trainer and charity worker and has a long record of anti-racist activism and as a political activist. 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 Vice-Chair of South Thanet Constituency Labour Party and played a leading role in the campaign there to prevent the election of the UKIP leader Nigel Farage in the 2015 general election. 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). She was expelled from Labour for "prejudicial and grossly detrimental behaviour against the party" on 27 March 2019. Walker retained her JVL membership, however.

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.

Walker also performed in a one-woman show about her experience, The Lynching, which she wrote in collaboration with Norman Thomas and premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2017. The Board of Deputies of British Jews wrote to Edinburgh Council to express their concern that the show was being mounted on council owned facilities. They informed the council of the allegations made against Walker and that these allegations had resulted in her suspension from the Labour Party and the loss of her vice-chair role with Momentum. Walker interpreted this as an attempt to prevent the show going ahead.

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.

Activism and political views

As a young woman, Walker was active in the anti-apartheid movement.

She is a supporter of Palestinian rights, a critic of Israeli policy towards Palestinians, and a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. She is also a member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

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".

In February 2019, she was elected to the board of the Labour Representation Committee.

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.

Personal life

Walker has both American and British citizenship.

When asked if she would describe herself as an anti-Zionist and not an anti-Semite, Walker said: "Yes. I certainly wouldn't call myself an anti-Semite as I am Jewish and my partner is Jewish." 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.

See also

• The Lobby (TV series)
• Antisemitism in the UK Labour Party