Enough is enough: Labour must expel Jackie Walker immediately over her latest outburst

Fresh from her reinstatement to the party, following her suspension for claiming that Jews were behind the slave trade, Vice Chair of Momentum Jackie Walker has told delegates at the Labour Party Conference that Holocaust Memorial Day is not inclusive enough and that Jewish schools do not need special security.

In response to another delegate, she said that Holocaust Memorial Day should be “open to all peoples who’ve experienced Holocaust” and as delegates angrily heckled her, she told the room: “I was a bit concerned…at your suggestions that the Jewish community is under such threat that they have to use security in all its buildings…I have a grandson, he is a year old. There is security in his nursery and every school has security now. It’s not because I’m frightened or his parents are frightened that he is going to be attacked.” On Monday she said that antisemitism was being “exaggerated” to “undermine Jeremy”.

It is hard to draw any conclusion from her latest outburst other than that she thinks that Holocaust education should focus less on antisemitism, and that the brutal murder of Jews around Europe, including the shooting of Jewish schoolchildren in Toulouse four years ago by Islamist terrorist Mohammed Merah, is somehow not linked to antisemitism.

Jackie Walker is in denial about antisemitism at the same time as perpetrating it. It is beyond disgraceful that she was readmitted to the Labour Party and remains Vice Chair of Momentum.

Shortly after her outburst, Jeremy Corbyn closed the Labour Party Conference with a promise to fight antisemitism with his “every breath” but this is just the latest in a string of incidents involving Jackie Walker. What is there to investigate? How many more chances will she be given? Enough is enough. Jackie Walker must be expelled from the Labour Party and Momentum immediately and condemned in the strongest possible terms.

Until Labour matches its rhetoric with action, we remain of the view that the Labour Party is not safe for Jews.