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Free Speech is 'under attack' in Britain, Jones claims
May 20, 2025
Director of Case Management at the Free Speech Union [FSU] Ben Jones has hit out at the "grossly disproportionate" sentencing for Lucy Connolly, following the dismissal of her appeal.Connolly was jailed last October after posting on social media that hotels housing asylum seekers should be "set on fire".FULL STORY HERE.
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Ben, this is, I must say I was somewhat surprised
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Who knows about these things? Because I thought the original sentence, 31 months, was draconian
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And bearing in mind her circumstance, she's a young mother, I thought that particularly after the representations by others
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including your own organisation, they would have at least reduced her sentence
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It's basically disappointing. It's hard to know what else to say other than that. We've supported Lucy for a long time
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This is not the result that we were hoping for. It remains the case that the sentence, in our view, is grossly disproportionate
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I think I'd also like to say, at this point, that the Free Speech Union is contacted by hundreds of people in any month
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many of whom are absolutely terrified about what they can and cannot say in this country
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They just do not know what the rules are. J.D. Vance, the American Vice President, actually did talk, didn't he, Ben
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recently about how, in his view, free speech was under attack in Great Britain. I think this verdict
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will feed into that view. I'm afraid he's absolutely right to say that freedom of speech
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is under attack in Britain, and it's a sustained attack that's been going on for a long time
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It's an attack that is not relenting in any way. And unfortunately, we see that comments around
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immigration, the scale of immigration, the failure to integrate discussion of the tensions
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which are undeniable and inescapable in modern Britain is a topic that is being reacted to by the authorities in an increasingly heavy way That is what we can read from this result today
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It's what we're seeing at the Free Speech Union constantly, that people who want to express their criticism, their concern
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their very grave concerns about what's happening in this country, feel that they're not able to. And those that do find that if it's not the police knocking on their door
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It will be their employer dismissing them from their employment because they do not share the company's values because they have objected, usually in very moderate terms, to mass immigration or to these sorts of issues
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Do you suspect in any way, and I appreciate this is going to be a subjective view, Ben, but that the judiciary are taking their lead from the top
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We have a very prominent human rights lawyer in Number 10 who made his views quite clear after the Southport riots
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I think we're in a dangerous situation as a country where that will be the perception of millions of people in this country reacting to this verdict
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The trust in the police, in the authorities generally, in the courts and the judiciary, I think is in a free fall
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This is a terrible situation for any country to be in. And I think that many, many people watching this will agree entirely with what you have just said
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she her own son lucy connolly had a son that died um 14 years earlier her argument was the news of
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the murders of those southport children had was very triggering for her she she stood in the of those grieving parents um and when she was asked why she deleted the post she told the court I calmed myself down and I know that wasn an acceptable thing to say
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it wasn't the right thing to say, it wasn't what I wanted to actually happen
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It's very difficult to see any sort of other factors other than just cruelty and making a political point
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that have resulted in this woman being taken away from her daughter for two and a half years
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Is this the end for her now in terms of appeals, Ben? Does she have anywhere else that she can go
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It's difficult to say at this point. We're reviewing it and the judgment has only just come out a few minutes ago
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I think the point I would make at this stage, at the risk of labouring the point
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is that I think this ruling, and when you look at the wording she used
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for all I care, I think is the crucial phrase, for all I care
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I think, in my view, clearly this is not a form of words that she should have used
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She realised that very quickly within a few hours afterwards. And as you say, she deleted this post
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But this is not somebody who set out to incite violence or racial hatred
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This is somebody who, for entirely understandable human reasons, had a reaction to that horrifying, horrifying news
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that she later regretted and very immediately recanted. And I think people watching this overwhelmingly are going to see that this is a grossly disproportionate sentence and the decision today is the wrong one I think one of the things Ben that I find really chilling about this as well
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is the fact that when she was arrested and the police confiscated her phone
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they found other things that she had said in private on WhatsApp exchanges with friends, which were also deemed to be racist
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And she was grilled about this in the court and they said, do you think we're being invaded by immigrants
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And she said, I believe that we have a massive number of people in the country that are unchecked coming into the country
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and I believe that is a national security risk. It's almost like what she said in the court they deem is irrelevant
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compared to private conversations she'd had with friends about immigration, particularly illegal immigration
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on the private WhatsApp messages. Is that relatively a new phenomenon for courts to look at your private correspondence
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Well, I think what I'd say to that point, I'd actually I'd point you to the example of the Scottish Hate Crime Act
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which came into effect a little over a year ago, which removed the private dwelling defence
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And so I think what we are seeing increasingly, whether it's from the police or whether it's from employers
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looking at what people are saying in private, in WhatsApp chats. We are seeing a disregard for people's privacy
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and for their right to express views, even unpalatable views, in private, in the home
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or in a WhatsApp conversation. Yeah. Fascinating, Ben. Thank you. And deeply disturbing
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It is. That's Ben Jones, who's from the Free Speech Union, which is backing Lucy Connolly
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