UPDATE, 28 May: Walker’s suspension has been lifted
Via Jackie Walker @stopthesuspensions
This is the motion passed last night:
“Islington North constituency Labour Party 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 long-standing 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 of 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 on Dover.
We welcome Jeremy Corbyn’s initiative to hold a full inquiry into anti-semitism in the Labour Party. Any member who has made obviously 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.
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.
We resolve to send this motion to the National Executive Committee.”
It was carried by an overwhelming vote
It’s good that this resolution has been passed, as far as it goes. But it is still weak and reflects the left’s capitulation to Zionism. How can the Chakrabarti enquiry be welcomed when it’s terms of reference assume that there is a ‘problem’ of anti-semitic, ie. racialised hatred of Jewish people, in Labour?
There is simply no evidence of that sentiment in any of the cases that have been unscrupulously depicted in the media. This is what ‘anti-semitism’ must mean, if it is not to be sophistry and lies. Labour should expel those who make false allegations of anti-Jewish racism as well as those who indulge in racialised abuse against Jews or anyone else. But apart from that, there should be an end to ‘thought crime’ witchhunts based of criticism of the behaviour of some Jews, past or present.
Labour should support actions for defamation against those who make such unscrupulous and crooked allegations against critics of racist behaviour by Zionists, who are a powerful organised racist trend in Western politics as well as the ruling trend in Occupied Palestine, as this witchhunt shows.
Takes money to begin an action for defamation – but that should not stop the NEC from supporting victims of a politically motivated Libel, I for one woulf support a levy on members to fund such action – they would, at the very least, expose the motives and real affiliations of JLM et al.