The wife of a Conservative councillor has been sentenced after she posted a message on social media calling for hotels being used to house asylum seekers to be attacked.
Lucy Connolly
Lucy Connolly, the wife of West Northamptonshire Conservative councillor Raymond Connolly, has been jailed at Birmingham Crown Court for 31 months for inciting racial hatred on X on the day of the Southport attacks.
Lucy Connolly, 41, a childminder, had taken to X, formerly Twitter, to call for hotels housing migrants to be set on fire in the wake of the murders of three girls in Southport.
In the message, she said: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******s for all I care … If that makes me racist, so be it.”
Mrs Connolly, who is married to the West Northamptonshire councillor Raymond Connolly, had been remanded in prison since her first hearing on 10 August.
Connolly advertised her childminding services on the online platform Childcare.co.uk, which said that once it heard about her “highly inappropriate tweet” it took action to suspend her as an advertiser.
The UK riots swept the country following the murder of three girls in Southport
Speaking following her guilty plea, her husband said that his wife understood what she had done and regretted it.
Mr Connolly said: “She knows that she overstepped the mark and there is consequences for it. Hopefully she’ll be able to learn from this and move on with her life.”
Many of those arrested for disorder have received lengthy custodial sentences
This comes amid a series of strict sentences taken by authorities in the wake of the riots that engulfed the country following the senseless murders of three children in Southport.
In the aftermath of the murders, misinformation spread online blamed an illegal immigrant for the killings, with the claims later being revealed to be false.