By Michael Deacon:
On July 29, in the hours following
the killings of three little girls in Southport, a 41-year-old childminder from Northampton named Lucy Connolly posted the following message on social media. “Mass deportation now,” she wrote, “set fire to all the f---ing hotels full of the b------s for all I care.”
Her words were vile. No question. But should she really have been sentenced to
two-and-a-half years in prison?
I think people are entitled to wonder. Especially when they see men like Huw Edwards walk free after being found guilty of possessing images of children being sexually abused. Most people in this country, I suspect, would argue that, of the two crimes, the more heinous is the latter. But the way things are going, they may be starting to feel as if, nowadays, you get punished more severely for what you think than for what you do.
They may also recall that, in February, three women who had attended a pro-Palestinian march in London were convicted of a terrorist offence for displaying images of paragliders – eerily like the ones who slaughtered innocent civilians on October 7, 2023. Yet these women – Heba Alhayek, Pauline Ankunda and Noimutu Olayinka Taiwo – were spared jail.
“You crossed the line,” the judge told them, “but it would have been fair to say that emotions ran very high on this issue.”
Well, yes. They certainly did. But then, emotions also “ran very high” after the little girls were killed in Southport, too.
www.judiciary.uk
