The wife of a conservative British politician has been sentenced to one year behind bars for inciting racial hatred on social media.
Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old nanny from West Northhampshire, called for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire and for mass deportation in a July 29 post on X.
Connolly’s offensive statements were posted on the same day as the Southport Stabbings, when three young girls were killed and many others injured in a knife attack during a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga event in the northwest town of Southport.
The perpetrator, a teenage boy whose parents hailed from Rwanda, was falsely thought to be an illegal immigrant, and riots by far-right groups erupted across the country. In one instance, conservative protestors violently clashed with police near a mosque in Southport, setting vehicles aflame, throwing bottles at authorities, and injuring police dogs, reported CNN.
Connolly’s tweet, according to the sentencing remarks, read, “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f—ing hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it, take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.”
The nanny’s tirade, seen by 310,000 people, immediately put her on the radar of authorities and ultimately proved to be her undoing, as presiding Judge Melbourne Inman found it “intended to incite serious violence.” Her racist abuse was not limited to just one post.
Police found inflammatory comments on her social media both before and after the Southport stabbings.
Connolly, who had no previous convictions, reportedly commented about a sword attack on X, writing, “I bet my house it was one of these boat invaders.” She also weighed in on a video posted by a far-right activist, saying “Somalian, I guess,” accompanied by a vomiting emoji, reported the BBC.
By the time she was arrested on Aug. 6, she had deleted her X account and turned to WhatsApp, boasting she would “play the mental health card” and deny responsibility if police arrested her. On the day before her arrest, she joked, “..raging tweet about burning down hotels has bit me on the arse lol.”
Connolly and her husband, Tory Councillor Raymond Connolly, had lost a son in a “horrendous way,” said her defense attorney, adding that “it can only have a drastic detrimental effect on someone,” reported news outlets. Her husband Raymond previously told the BBC his wife was “a good person, and she’s not a racist,” explaining that she made a “stupid, spur-of-the-moment tweet out of frustration and quickly deleted it.”
“She’s got Somalian and Bangladeshi kids she looks after, and she loves them like they’re her own,” he added.
Despite her threat to use the “mental health card,” the court found no evidence of a mental disorder, and Connolly ultimately pleaded guilty to intention to stir up racial hatred. During police questioning, she admitted she did not like immigrants and claimed that children were not safe around them, said investigator Frank Ferguson via the BBC.
In the judge’s remarks, he placed Connolly squarely among those “who will seek an excuse to use violence and disorder causing injury, damage, loss and fear to wholly innocent members of the public and sentences for those who incite racial hatred and disharmony in our society are intended to both punish and deter.”
She was given a 31-month sentence, 40 percent of which will be served in jail, followed by probation. Her husband is also facing backlash, with calls for his resignation from the Labour MP for Northampton South, Mike Reader.
