Activist Jackie Walker elected onto Momentum organising committee

The Labour activist kicked off the National Committee of left-wing grassroots group Momentum for offensive comments about Holocaust Memorial Day has been quietly brought back into the organisation’s fold.

Jackie Walker, who was removed as vice-chair after she complained that HMD did not include other genocides, has been elected onto the Conference Arrangements Committee, organising Momentum’s first full conference early next year.

Walker, who is Jewish, drew scorn earlier this year for suggesting that Jews were “chief financiers of the slave trade,” but was chosen as one of seven conference organisers at a meeting of Momentum’s National Steering Committee on Saturday.

There have been three motions submitted in defence of Walker, who was also heard saying that she had not “heard a definition of anti-Semitism I can work with,” including one motion describing the “anti-Semitism witch-hunt”.

Another Momentum member elected to the Arrangements Committee was James Elliott, a former Oxford student and lead voice at the Oxford University Labour Club, who has been mentioned in relation to allegations of anti-Semitism.

Among those reacting to news of Walker’s election was Richard Angell, director of Progress, Labour’s centrist pressure group. He said: “Jackie Walker was on her way out… But now she is back, in charge of Momentum’s internal democracy and the highly factionalised conference that will take place in the spring. She has neither apologised nor retracted her remarks. This is extremely disappointing.”