From Careless Tweeter to Political Prisoner
How Britain's Labour government fast-tracked and prejudiced Lucy Connolly’s persecution
In July 2024, three girls were stabbed to death at a dance class in Southport. Within hours, false rumours spread online that the attacker was a Muslim asylum-claimant who had arrived by boat.
Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old childminder and wife of a Conservative councillor, was at home when the news broke. At 8:30pm on 29 July, she tweeted:
“Mass deportation now. Set fire to all the fucking 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.”
Connolly tweeted to about 10,000 followers. The post was viewed 310,000 times and reposted nearly 1,000 times, before she deleted it, after three and a half hours.
As she admitted, the tweet was crude and angry.
But Britain’s judicial system decided it was a crime too.
Further, the government decided that it was a crime of not just hate speech, but also an incitement to violence, and a cause of public disorder.
On the ground of public safety, the government criminalized Connolly with unusual speed and authority, and unusual prejudice, which in turn led to unusual truncation and distortion of due process.
Connolly was arrested eight days after the tweet, on 6 August. She was interviewed again and formally charged on 9 August. She appeared in magistrates’ court via video link the next morning (a Saturday). Her case was sent straight to the Crown Court. A plea and trial preparation hearing was scheduled for 12 August. It was adjourned – not for months, as would be normal, but to 2 September, when she pled guilty.
Connolly was pressured by the prosecutor and even her public defender into pleading guilty, on promise of quicker resolution.
The charge was intent to incite racial hatred. But the CPS did not prove that she intended to incite violence or had the effect of inciting violence.
She tweeted her carelessness about whether asylum hotels burn. Nobody acted violently as an effect of her Tweet, so far as the CPS could prove.
But the CPS argued that racial hatred was likely to be incited by her tweet – a standard the judge accepted at sentencing.
Indicting her for incitement was a stretch. Her punishment too was a stretch.
She expected to be fined or given a suspended sentence, and to go home to her kids and unwell relatives.
Instead, she was sentenced to 31 months in prison.
The judge categorized her incitement of racial hatred in the highest band, with a starting sentence of three years. He added an uplift for aggravating factors, before discounting for the guilty plea.
British courts routinely issue longer prison sentences for a tweet than a rape.
Connolly’s appeal was rejected in May 2025, although (during another summer of protest against crime by asylum-claimants, and official privileging of asylum-claimants) she was released in August, after about 10 months in prison.
After release, she described herself as a political prisoner, for the excessive charge and sentence, the bias of the prosecutor, the judge, and even her defence counsel, the political administration’s intervention, and the partisan briefings against her.
New documents obtained by Connolly through a Subject Access Request (SAR) to the Crown Prosecution Service confirm what she had suspected.
These documents show that the political administration fast-tracked the prosecution, and that the fast-tracking contributed to the lack of due process.
In other words, partisan intervention contributed to a miscarriage of justice.
The documents show that specialist counter-terrorism prosecutors escalated an “emergency charging decision,” in order to deter further riots.
The escalation passed through the CPS to the Attorney General. While prosecutors are nominally non-partisan, the Attorney General is a partisan minister.
Even though the request was made on a Friday night, Lord Hermer signed off within 12 hours.
The criminalization of incitement under the Public Order Act (1986) is broad and subjective. Requiring the Attorney General’s consent was meant as a safeguard, but in this case became an accelerator.
