The wife of a Conservative councillor who was jailed for posting an online rant about migrants on the day of the Southport murders has lost her bid for a cut in her 31-month prison sentence.
Lucy Connolly was jailed last October over the post on X, formerly known as Twitter, in which she wrote: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.”
The post came on the day three girls had been murdered in a stabbing spree by Axel Rudakubana at a dance class in Southport, amid signs of national unrest.
At the Court of Appeal last week, Connolly gave evidence from prison, saying she “never” intended to incite violence and did not realise pleading guilty would mean she accepted that she had.
The court heard she lost her first-born child at 19 months old after hospital blunders, and she says she was triggered by news of the child murders in Southport.
Delivering their ruling on Tuesday, three senior judges - Lord Justice Holroyde, Mr Justice Goss and Mr Justice Sheldon - rejected Connolly’s bid for a reduction in her sentence.
The judges said they rejected the argument that the tweet was “no more than an expression of emotion, which could not be taken seriously”.
“The words of the tweet are on their face an incitement to serious violence”, they set out.
Connolly claimed she had not understood the lengthy sentence she faced when agreeing to plead guilty, and accused the lawyer who represented her of failures in his duties.
But the Court of Appeal - which heard evidence directly from Connolly - called her story “incredible”, and concluded: “Her evidence to this court showed her to be intelligent and articulate, with strong views and – because of the circumstances in which her son died – a deep mistrust of anyone who might be regarded as a person in authority telling her what to do or what to believe.
“Given her personal circumstances at the time of her arrest, and her understandable concern for her daughter, any reference to a prison sentence, let alone a sentence based on a starting point of three years, must have caused her great anxiety.
“In those circumstances, we are quite unable to accept that she signed the endorsement without any understanding of its references to the culpability factor or the starting point.”
The judges refused to accept Connolly was in a “state of ignorance” in conferences with her lawyer before entering her guilty plea, and ahead of the sentencing hearing when she did not put forward a basis of plea or challenge the serious categorisation of her crime.
The judges went on to reject the argument that Connolly had been treated too harshly by the sentencing judge.
“We of course have every sympathy with the applicant over the death of her son, and we can understand why she remains angry about the circumstances of his death”, they ruled.
“We can therefore accept that the shocking events in Southport had an impact on her which went beyond that felt by many others.
“But as the judge rightly said, she did not post a message of support and sympathy to the victims of the Southport attack and the bereaved. Nor, we would add, did she post a message of hostility confined to the perpetrator of the Southport attack.
“She chose instead to incite serious violence against large numbers of persons. The applicant’s personal history cannot significantly reduce her culpability for that serious offence.”
The Court of Appeal decision means Connolly must wait until the summer to be set free, once she has served 40 per cent of her prison term.
Connolly told the appeal hearing she had been “really angry” after the Southport attacks, but hours after posting the rant on X realised it was not an acceptable thing to say, so deleted it.
Her barrister, Adam King, asked if she had intended for anyone to set fire to asylum hotels or “murder any politicians”.
She replied: “Absolutely not.”
Naeem Valli, for the prosecution, told the court the post was a reflection of her attitude towards immigrants.
He added: “At the time of creating the post, the applicant clearly intended the racial hatred would be stirred up and also intended to incite serious violence.”
Earlier, he had asked Connolly if she believed the country was being “invaded” by immigrants.
She replied: “I believe that we have a massive number of people in the country that are unchecked, coming into the country and I believe that is a national security risk.”
She added that it would be “absolutely incorrect” to say she did not want immigrants in the country.
Connolly, of Northampton, was arrested on August 6, by which point she had deleted her social media account, but other messages which included further racist remarks were uncovered by officers who seized her phone.
On August 5, the day before she was arrested, Connolly sent a WhatsApp message which included the words “raging tweet about burning down hotels has bit me on the arse lol”.
The judge who jailed her also noted that she had sent other messages as riots swept across the country saying that violence was not the answer.
The former childminder, who is married to Raymond Connolly, was sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court last October after pleading guilty to a charge of inciting racial hatred.
Mr Connolly had been a Tory West Northamptonshire district councillor but lost his seat in May. He remains on the town council.
Responding to the ruling, Connolly's husband said he was “heartbroken” by the “shocking and unfair” decision.
He said: “My wife Lucy is a good person and not a racist.
“As a childminder she took care of small children of African and Asian heritage; they loved Lucy as she loved them.
“My wife has paid a very high price for making a mistake, and today the court has shown her no mercy.”
Connolly brought her appeal with the support of the Free Speech Union, which said the judgment was “deeply disappointing” and that the sentence was “plainly disproportionate”.
It cited the cases of three others, including two jailed for their roles in the disorder following the Southport attacks, who received shorter jail terms.
Philip Prescott was jailed in August last year for two years and four months after admitting violent disorder in Southport, with Merseyside Police stating that he threw missiles at police, including a brick from a damaged garden wall.
Haris Ghaffar was jailed for 20 months in September, also by Judge Inman, after admitting the same offence, having kicked a door during efforts to storm a pub wrongly believed to contain English Defence League members in Birmingham in August.
But Sentencing Council guidelines state that the maximum jail sentence for violent disorder is one of five years in prison, with a range of between three and four-and-a-half years' custody for those who commit “category 1A” offences.
Lord Toby Young, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said: “This is terribly disappointing. How can it be right for Lucy to have been condemned to spend more than two-and-a-half years in jail for a single tweet when members of grooming gangs who plead guilty to the sexual exploitation of children get lower sentences?
“Lucy should be at home with her 12 year-old daughter and husband, not rotting in jail.”
