Vilification victim Jackie Walker hosted by DTUC this week

A Labour Party member temporarily suspended following accusations of antisemitism last year will appear at The Playhouse this week with the backing of the Derry Trades Union Council and a Jewish Voice for a Just Peace.

Jackie Walker, aged 63, a former vice-chair of Momentum, which backed Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership bid, was suspended after suggesting Holocaust Memorial Day does not commemorate the victims of other genocides. It does.

But Ms. Walker insists the accusations of antisemitism were false and in her one woman show ‘The Lynching,’ which she will perform in the city at 7 p.m. on Thursday, she addresses the matter head on.

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“I do not seek the destruction of Israel. I seek to save it from the slide into militarism, racism and far-right nationalism. We must be free to criticise any ideology that advocates the rights of one people over another. We must be free to fight for that right without being accused of antisemitism.

“I think the Palestinians have a right to self-determination as much as the Israelis.

“The time to resist is now, to defend the rights of black and white, Jew and gentile.”

In the show, Ms Walker plays a number of characters including her late Jewish communist father and her late Jamaican-born mother, a black civil rights activist,” she said.

Imagining herself on trial for antisemitism, she adopts the character of her mother to put the case for the defence.