Southport attacks: Woman jailed for 'set fire to hotels' tweet loses appeal bid

The wife of a Conservative councillor who was jailed over a tweet inciting racial hatred online after the Southport attacks has lost her bid to appeal.

Lucy Connolly, 41, had her bid dismissed to have her sentence reduced at the Court of Appeal today. She had previously been jailed for 31 months. On July 29, last year, she posted on X: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f*****g hotels full of the b******s for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.”

The post came after three girls were stabbed and killed at a holiday club in Southport on the same date, sparking nationwide unrest. Her post was viewed 310,000 times in three-and-a-half hours before Connolly deleted it.

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Today, Lord Justice Holroyde, Mr Justice Goss and Mr Justice Sheldon, refused her application to appeal.

In a written judgment, Lord Justice Holroyde, said: “There is no arguable basis on which it could be said that the sentence imposed by the judge was manifestly excessive. The application for leave to appeal against sentence therefore fails and is refused.”

He added that the principal ground of appeal “was substantially based on a version of events put forward by the applicant which we have rejected”.

Last week the Court of Appeal in London heard that Connolly had not intended the post to incite violence.

Giving evidence from HMP Drake Hall in Eccleshall in Staffordshire, she said that when she initially wrote the post she was “really angry, really upset” and “distressed that those children had died” and that she knew how the parents felt.

She said: “Those parents still have to live a life of grief. It sends me into a state of anxiety and I worry about my children.”

The court heard that Connolly’s son died tragically around 14 years ago, and that news of the murders of the children in Southport had caused a resurgence of her anxiety around this.

Adam King, representing Connolly, asked if she had intended for anyone to set fire to asylum hotels, or “murder any politicians”.

She replied: “Absolutely not.”

Connolly told the court that during discussions with her barrister at the crown court she did not understand that by pleading guilty she was accepting that she intended to incite violence.

She said: “When I wrote that tweet there had been no violence and it was never my intention to cause any.”

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.

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. Today, Mr Connolly said he was “heartbroken” his wife Lucy’s appeal bid was dismissed, adding: “My wife has paid a very high price for making a mistake and today the court has shown her no mercy."