RIOT-tweet mum Lucy Connolly was freed from jail to rejoin her husband and 12-year-old daughter — after more than a year as a victim of “two-tier justice”.
Husband Ray, a Tory on Northampton Town Council said she had coped “relatively well” with jail, adding: “The only person who hasn’t is our daughter.”
SWNSLucy Connolly with husband Ray, who says Starmer deserves a ‘pat on the back’ for ‘making it so difficult for a girl of 12’[/caption]
Lucy Connolly was caged for stirring up racial hatred after the Southport killingsPA
picture Stone LtdLucy left HMP Peterborough in a taxi at 10am[/caption]
“It will be good to have her home. We are thankful for the support.
“Our focus will be to try to sort out our lives and for my wife to reconnect with our daughter.”
Lucy, 42, caged for stirring up racial hatred after the Southport killings, left HMP Peterborough in a taxi at 10am.
Her punishment sparked a major debate, with PM Sir Keir Starmer accused of “two-tier justice”.
Thanked public for support
Tory councillor Ray added sarcastically: “Well done to Starmer for making it so difficult for a girl of 12. Let’s all give him a pat on the back.”
He said the family were delighted Lucy was coming home after more than a year and thanked the public for their support.
Ex-childminder Lucy wore pink for her low-key departure from HMP Peterborough — crouching down in a white Skoda estate at 10am.
She did not immediately return to the family’s £400,000 semi in Northampton and is understood to be staying away from her home.
In all she spent over a year behind bars — two months held on remand before she was sentenced at Birmingham crown court.
She was freed at the automatic release point, after serving 40 per cent of her term in prison.
She will serve the remainder on licence under supervision.
Reform deputy leader Richard Tice MP, who visited her in jail, told The Sun: “I’m delighted that Lucy is finally out of prison.
“She should never have been inside in the first place.
“I understand she is doing OK and am sure it was a very emotional reunion for her.
“The family will now need some time and space to readjust and welcome Lucy home.
Lucy was arrested on August 6 and later pleased guilty to stirring up racial hatred
PAHer husband Ray, a Tory on Northampton Town Council, said she had coped ‘relatively well’ with jail[/caption]
AFPPM Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of ‘two-tier justice’[/caption]
“We all need to keep the pressure on the Government and Keir Starmer as to why she was prosecuted in the first place.
“Given that, in 2013, while Director of Public Prosecutions he introduced guidelines that would have kept Lucy out of jail he is the biggest hypocrite in the country.
“This case just confirms that we have two-tier justice.”
Lucy tweeted on July 29, 2024, hours after Axel Rudakubana killed Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Da Silva Aguiar, nine, at a dance class.
Lucy was charged with stirring up racial hatred — an offence that doesn’t even require intent to incite violence.
Toy leader Kemi Badenoch
Her post called for “mass deportation now” and urged followers on X to “set fire” to migrant hotels. It was viewed 310,000 times in the three hours before she deleted it.
Lucy was arrested on August 6 and later pleaded guilty to stirring up racial hatred.
During her appeal against her sentence in May, the Court of Appeal heard the news of the Southport murders had sparked a resurgence of the anxiety caused by her son Harry’s death at the age of 19 months, 14 years earlier.
When Sir Keir was DPP in 2013, he introduced guidance saying prosecutors should consider being lenient to suspects who “swiftly” deleted tweets or showed remorse.
Speaking after Lucy’s release, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said “Her punishment was harsher than sentences handed down for bricks thrown at police or actual rioting.
“After Southport, Keir Starmer branded all protesters ‘far-right’ and called for fast-track prosecutions.
“Days later, Lucy was charged with stirring up racial hatred — an offence that doesn’t even require intent to incite violence.
“Why exactly did the Attorney General think that was in the public interest? Meanwhile, former Labour councillor Ricky Jones called for protestors to have their throats slit.
‘Law itself is broken’
“Charged with encouraging violent disorder, he pleaded not guilty and was acquitted by a jury who saw his words as a disgusting remark made in the heat of the moment, not a call to action.
“Juries are a cornerstone of justice, but we shouldn’t have to rely on them to protect basic freedoms.
“Protecting people from words should not be given greater weight in law than public safety.
“If the law does this, then the law itself is broken and it’s time Parliament looked again at the Public Order Act.”
Sir Keir defended Lucy’s sentence in May saying: “I am strongly in favour of free speech.
“But I am equally against incitement to violence against others. I will always support the action taken by our police and courts to keep our streets and people safe.”
Lucy was one of around a dozen lags freed from 1,200-inmate all-female HMP Peterborough yesterday.
She had been put on a “basic regime” after refusing to return to her cell. It meant she had £5.50 a week to spend in the canteen.
Mr Tice claimed she was bruised after being manhandled by guards.
Yesterday ex-prison governor Ian Acheson suggested Lucy could sue, which would mean jail logs would be disclosable to her lawyers.
He added: “I’ve no idea whether this will happen, but features of her treatment alleged in media were so perverse it’s a real possibility. Interesting times ahead.”
LOCKED UP FOR ONE TWEET IS SCANDAL
By Lord Toby Young, from The Free Speech Union
I was glad to see Lucy Connolly finally walk free today, but the fact that she has spent more than a year in prison for a single tweet — quickly deleted and apologised for — is a national scandal, particularly when Labour MPs, councillors and anti-racism campaigners who have said and done much worse have avoided jail. The same latitude they enjoyed should have been granted to Lucy.
Sir Keir Starmer said in May that Lucy’s sentence was justified because her tweet was “incitement to violence against other people”. But was it?
The test we employ when deciding whether to prosecute someone for supposedly inciting violence should be the same as it is in the United States, namely, was it intended to cause violence and was it likely to?
I don’t think Lucy’s tweet met either limb of that test (and for speech not to be protected by the First Amendment in America it has to meet both).
Had she urged her followers to burn down a particular asylum hotel, maybe it would have failed those tests.
But she did not and she added the words ‘for all I care’, suggesting she was indifferent as to whether asylum hotels in general were burnt down and not inciting people to set fire to them.
Had she pleaded not guilty, she might well have been acquitted by a jury, just as the ex-Royal Marine Jamie Michael was after being charged with the same offence.
The Free Speech Union, the organisation I run, paid for Jamie’s defence and we offered to pay for Lucy’s.
But unlike Ricky Jones, the Labour councillor who urged people to cut the throats of anti-immigration protestors, she was not granted bail and worried that if she pleaded not guilty she would have to spend longer in prison awaiting trial than if she pleaded guilty.
As it turned out, she was wrong about that, but then she was not expecting to be sentenced to more than two-and-half years, which is longer than some members of grooming gangs have received after pleading guilty to child rape.
What Lucy has suffered at the hands of the British state is a clear case of injustice. She has become Exhibit A for those of us raising the alarm about the assault on free speech in Starmer’s Britain.
And if it’s any consolation to her, that alarm is now being heard across the world, from the White House to Quinta de Olivos in Argentina.
Let’s hope the people of Britain wake up to this attack on their right to freedom of expression before they lose it entirely.
Lord Young is the founder and director of the Free Speech Union.
TV HUWSPARED, SO WHYNOT HER?
THERE have been many “two-tier justice” cases which sparked comparisons to the Lucy Connolly conviction.
DEPRAVED ex-BBC presenter Huw Edwards admitted making indecent images of children, even calling some of the sex abuse pictures “amazing”.
Edwards, 64, was given the images on WhatsApp by convicted paedophile Alex Williams, who he paid up to £1,500. But despite admitting three charges and possessing 41 images, Edwards dodged jail with a six-month suspended sentence.
LABOUR councillor Ricky Jones, 58, called for far-right protesters’ throats to be cut at a rally in Walthamstow, East London, last August.
Although he was caught on video making a throat-slitting gesture, a jury at Snaresbrook crown court cleared him last week of encouraging violent disorder.
CHILD rapist Rees Newman, of Newport, avoided jail as the prisons were too full in 2023.
He was convicted of the historic rape of a child aged under 14, but had his term suspended for two years.
A THUG who hurled death threats and threatened an air hostess with gang rape was given just a 15-month sentence, which critics said must be reviewed. Salman Iftikhar spewed racist abuse on a flight from Heathrow and told stewardess Angie Walsh: “You will be dragged by your hair from your room and gang raped and set on fire.”
LAB technician Charles Cannon, of Aldershot, Hants, avoided jail after being convicted of possessing terrorist information, including documents on how to make explosives and weapons.
He got an 18-month sentence, suspended for two years.
EX-MP Mike Amesbury was jailed for ten weeks, but freed on appeal with a suspended sentence, for beating a constituent in Frodsham, Cheshire. He was kicked out of Labour and later quit.
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