Lucy Connolly's Immigration Struggle Session

On Tuesday the 20th of May, Lucy Connolly, a childminder and the wife of a Conservative councillor, lost the appeal of her 31-month prison sentence for a tweet sent after the Southport massacre.

Lucy was charged under Section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986 with publishing material intending to stir up racial hatred, for the following deleted tweet:

She was advised by her solicitor to plead guilty, told that it would expedite her release. Lucy, like so many others told to take the charges imposed by Keir Starmer’s politicised magistrates’ courts, thought they would be home by Christmas. As Lord Toby Young of the Free Speech Union told

Harrison Pitt

and me on Deprogrammed:

“One of the things we're doing at the Free Speech Union is we are submitting an FOI request to the CPS in England and Wales to see if the percentage of people pleading guilty — this is people who've been arrested and charged in connection with the recent disturbances — if the percentage of them pleading guilty is higher than average. We think it is, and we suspect that many of the people who've been arrested are being poorly advised and potentially told um by the courts and the police that if they don't plead guilty they'll be umon remand for at least year won't be bailed, etc.

We did hear from one person who said that um he'd plad guilty because um he was told that his trial wouldn't be for at least a year, he couldn't get bail, he'd be on remand for at least a year, and he wanted to be home for Christmas, so he pled guilty.”

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After she was convicted, Northamptonshire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service lied about her, distorting quotes from her lengthy police interview and using unrelated social media posts to present her to the public as a racist.

The police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) released a statement saying that Lucy “told officers she did not like immigrants and claimed that children were not safe from them”.

But Lucy hadn’t said that. What she said in her long interview with the police was, “I’m well aware that we need immigrants… I’m well aware that if I go to the hospital there are immigrants working there and the hospital wouldn’t function without them. I’m [also] well aware of the difference between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants and they are not checked and [nor is] what they might have done (any crimes) in their country of origin – it’s a national security issue and they’re a danger to children”. Sentiments which are shared by millions of British people.

Lucy broke down and cried when she heard how her words had been misrepresented. Whatever else she was, she was not a bigot. Lucy and her two sisters had been raised by an old-fashioned socialist mother to abhor racism. The Connollys asked for a transcript of the police interview which was grudgingly handed over after a long delay. Lucy’s mother complained to the CPS and they corrected the statement on their website to match what Lucy had actually said. Too late.

Police also accused Lucy of previous racist posts. Turns out she had called a friend “Pikey” after he had called her “Brummie c--t”. Even banter could be passed off as evidence of malignant character.

Even the state broadcaster, the BBC, misrepresented her post on X, claiming that,

Lucy Connolly, from Northampton, used a social media post on 29 July to call for "mass deportation now" and urged followers to "set fire" to hotels housing asylum seekers.

Lucy did not instruct people to commit acts of wanton arson; she said that she would not care if people did so. A clumsy and incendiary turn of phrase, but just words. And if calling for “mass deportation now” is a criminal offence, then the government will have to imprison me, Rupert Lowe MP, and the entirety of His Majesty’s Opposition, for whom removing foreign criminals and illegal immigrants from our country is a matter of principle.

Lucy’s appeal was denied on Tuesday, after she was subjected to a struggle session during her hearing about her views on immigration, as proof of her "racist views".