Free Lucy Connolly

No citizen should be in prison for offensive tweets.

In what has become an emblematic case of the UK’s betrayal of free speech, Lucy Connolly has now lost her appeal for early release. This mother and childminder had posted an offensive tweet in the direct aftermath of the Southport murders, in which a psychopath brutally attacked children with a knife at a yoga class. She had believed the false claim that the perpetrator was an asylum seeker, and written online that she had no objection to people burning down hotels where immigrants were residing.

The tweet was taken as evidence that Connolly had intended to ‘stir up racial hatred’ and incite violence during the febrile climate of the summer riots. It had been deleted within hours, no violence occurred as a result, and yet she was sentenced to 31 months in prison. Given that the severity of Connolly’s sentence was doubtless related to unofficial government pressure on the judiciary, many have made the case that Connolly is a political prisoner.

For all our shared revulsion at the tweet, we must remember that we are still talking here about words, not actions. It was completely right that Philip Prescott, a man who attacked a mosque as part of a mob during the riots, was sentenced to 28 months in jail. But Connolly has received an even longer sentence having committed no acts of violence at all. Many rapists and paedophiles have been treated far more leniently. I know of no sound argument that could possibility justify this state of affairs. It is the very definition of two-tier justice.

Let’s get the caveats out of the way. Nobody is defending what Connolly wrote. It was unpleasant, rash, misjudged, and much else besides. Here is the post in full.

Grim stuff. But it by no means fulfils any serious definition of incitement to violence. For one thing, she is not calling on hotels to be torched, but is rather making clear that she would not care if that occurred. This distinction is key, but has been overlooked. Moreover, Connolly has zero influence or clout. It is not as though anyone reading this could have taken it as an instruction or order and acted accordingly. Those wishing to appreciate the full context of why Connolly behaved as rashly as she did should read this excellent piece by Allison Pearson for The Telegraph.

It should go without saying that in a free society some people are going to say ghastly things. That’s the price we pay for liberty. The judge in this case made a statement in his ruling that has been widely interpreted as political: ‘It is a strength of our society that it is both diverse and inclusive. There is always a very small minority of people who will seek an excuse to use violence and disorder causing injury, damage, loss and fear to wholly innocent members of the public and sentences for those who incite racial hatred and disharmony in our society are intended to both punish and deter.’

This hat-tipping to DEI is unambiguously ideological. It followed on from Keir Starmer’s public statement to the effect that he wanted judges to administer the harshest sentences in cases of this kind. ‘I'm now expecting substantive sentencing before the end of this week’, he said, ‘that should send a very powerful message to anybody involved, either directly or online’. This week’s failed appeal can also be interpreted through a political lens. As Allison Pearson has pointed out: ‘To show mercy to Lucy Connolly now would be in some way to admit that the Prime Minister was mistaken and the sentences doled out to protestors were, in many cases, outrageously harsh’.

As to the question of inciting racial hatred, Connolly has since made clear that this was never her intention. It seems as though she was probably badly advised; at the very least, her lawyers have now said that she did not fully understand what she was admitting to. The Court of Appeal rejected this claim, but we know that many of those who have faced jail terms for tweets have been assured that pleading guilty is the best way to avoid being on remand indefinitely. When former Royal Marine Jamie Michael was prosecuted for ‘stirring up racial hatred’ having criticised the government’s immigration policies and called for peaceful protest, he very sensibly pleaded not guilty. Had he not done so, he would almost certainly have been in jail today for exercising his right to free speech.

One of the most sinister aspects to the Lucy Connolly case is how it reveals the widespread complacency that currently exists when it comes to freedom of expression. I have had endless arguments regarding her sentence, and the identical point is repeatedly asserted: that Connolly said a horrible thing and must be punished. What makes anyone believe that free speech only applies to benign and innocuous statements? It’s as though none of these people have ever read their Mill, Milton or Orwell. Noam Chomsky had it exactly right when he wrote: ‘If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all’.

The case of Lucy Connolly is a reminder that the UK is in a parlous state when it comes to free speech. We desperately need an equivalent to the US threshold for incitement to violence known as the ‘Brandenburg Test’. UK law should be revised to make clear that incitement can only occur where the speech is deliberately aimed towards that end, likely to cause violence, and that any impact should be imminent. Nasty words on the internet simply should not qualify.

Connolly’s ongoing imprisonment is a scandal whose implications are far more wide-reaching that the impact on one individual. We need to stop wasting time squabbling over whether what she said was moral or immoral – it was obviously indefensible – and start focusing on the broader principle of what happens when the state is empowered to incarcerate citizens for their speech. That way tyranny lies.

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