by Tom Slater, spiked
If we do not want a repeat of this authoritarian farce, we need to take an axe to our hate-speech laws.
So Lucy Connolly has finally been released from prison, nine months into her 31-month sentence for ‘inciting racial hatred’ on X in the wake of last year’s Southport murders. Good. This childminder from Northampton should never have spent a day in prison, and even so will now serve out the rest of her sentence at home under as-yet-unkown release conditions. Now, we must ensure this authoritarian farce is never repeated.
Let’s start with the obvious. What Connolly tweeted on 29 July 2024, when the bodies of knifeman Axel Rudakubana’s three tiny victims were barely cold, was inexcusable. ‘Set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care’, she raged to her 9,000 followers. ‘While you’re at it, take the treacherous government and politicians with them… If that makes me racist, so be it.’
Like so many others, Connolly was horrified by Southport – not least given that she had previously lost a child herself. Like so many others, she had seen the swirling online misinformation that the killer was a Muslim small-boats migrant. But startlingly few will have begun jabbering darkly online about burning human beings alive – albeit with that caveat, ‘for all I care’.
Was it ugly, bigoted, vile? Obviously. But should she have been locked up for it, held on remand, denied bail – twice? Should she have been handed down, what is believed to be, the longest prison sentence ever issued for a single social-media post – all after she had pleaded guilty, in the vain hope of getting home to her husband and daughter sooner? Obviously not. As a society, we continue to stub our toe on this crucial distinction, with disastrous consequences for all of our freedoms.
Read also: What the case of Lucy Connolly tells us about British justice, Telegraph editorial