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Commentator Matthew Stadlen has claimed that Lucy Connolly's remarks posted online, which resulted in her being jailed for 31 months, were "outrageous and despicable"Stadlen told GB News: "It was a disgusting, racist, horrific tweet that could could have been interpreted as incitement to murder. I thought it was an outrageous and despicable thing for her to say. "And by the way, there was another tweet, I think, from a few days earlier, which was completely racist. But my view is that 31 months in prison for what she did was excessive."WATCH ABOVE.
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The design of that, the intent behind that legislation
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I can't remember whether it was Tory legislation originally or Labour legislation, is to protect vulnerable people
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vulnerable women, from being harassed. It's not to stop the free speech of the protesters
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As I say, they can make their voices heard on social media, in the street indeed, just don't do it in a way
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that is actually seen to be harassing of women in those circumstances
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On the Lucy Connolly thing, I looked into the appeal court decision
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I read all 13 pages of it, as I recommend everyone at home does before forming a view on this
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Having looked into it, my view is, and this is very personal
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everyone will have their view on this, is I thought that the original judge probably, probably
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I may be wrong, got it wrong. Because of the way in which her tweet was couched
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It was a disgusting, racist, horrific tweet that could, could have been interpreted as incitement to murder
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But my view, and it's very personal, the way she did it by saying, for all I care
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meant that I don't think either that she intended for people to be murdered
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either asylum seekers or members of the government, because she talked about the government as well
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but also I don think a reasonable person looking at that tweet would have thought I am going to now go and burn down an asylum hotel or murder the government because of that tweet That my view
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I thought it was an outrageous and despicable thing for her to say. And, by the way, there was another tweet, I think, from a few days earlier
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which was completely racist. My view is that 31 months in prison for what she did was excessive
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But let's remember that that was a judge. It was not a politician who sentenced her
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And also that the act under which she was sentenced was from the 1980s, which was when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister
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Listen, I mean, I felt it was an excessive sentence as well, and, again, I wasn't in court and I'm always very aware
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not just being a former politician but having been a former lawyer, that it's very easy to jump onto particular bandwagons
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The more general point about free speech is we've all got to relax
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a little bit more and we've got to recognise that we can get offended
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And I worry that we're getting more and more offences on the statute book, more and more restrictions on free speech
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that are in play. But this wasn't a question of offence. The question here was, was it incitement to racial hatred
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and to violence, for goodness sake? And if the intent was, you people go out and burn down that asylum hotel
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or go and burn down the government or any MPs, then of course you have to be published
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It just my personal view and the judge took a different view My personal view of that particular post was it was not intended actually to incite real violence but I may be wrong But the other point is
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She says it wasn't intended. But the other point is, and you allude to this
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this is legislation that's now 40 years old, and we're living... And again, I'm not defending the way
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in which people are using social media, but evidently attitudes have changed fundamentally
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People get away with, often anonymous tweets, in social media that are saying dreadful things
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that, again, within the light of legislation that is 40 years old
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we need to look at things in a different light. And as I say, I think there broadly needs to be more tolerance
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of free speech. But, Mark, against that, and I think this is crucial, because of social media, which is a reality
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I said it had a democratising force earlier, but clearly social media can do things such as spark a riot
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If you have hundreds of thousands of people viewing horrific posts, and you then have people acting on those posts
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I'm not saying specifically this post, we live in a society where, as a consequence in part of social media
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ethnic minority families up and down the country were living in terror of their lives
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Children were terrified. So, hold on. You have to take social media responsibly
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OK, OK, yeah. With the privilege. But you also have to prove a connection
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with what has happened with that particular post And if you can prove that this particular post made that happen which is very difficult to do then I think you have to tread carefully So Mark Field do you think very briefly that Donald Trump was right to start looking into the way we
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are interpreting freedom of speech? It wasn't his business necessarily to interfere with UKFS, but I think hopefully it will open
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a debate, a reasoned debate on these issues around free speech. But do you think he's right to be doing that
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sending boys or people here to have a chat with those people to try and understand how we are interpreting our free speech laws
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Well, if it was being done with the intention of writing a very detailed, considered paper on this..
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Well, we don't know why. One suspects it's only being done for the..
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So do you think yes or no? So I worry that this is being done as a public relations exercise
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So was he wrong? Irrespective of that, in your opinion, yes or no? I think the real opportunity is that we have got an opportunity
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Can you answer yes or no? This is a typical politician. I'll answer. Typical politician. Ramble, ramble, ramble
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You've got about ten seconds and we've got... I'll answer. You haven't given me an answer, yes or no. Was he right? Yes or no
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On balance, no. I would say no. And one of my main worries here is that he's doing the bidding
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I would suspect, I don't have the proof of it, of Elon Musk, who just happens to be within government
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but also owns the digital town square in the form of X
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formerly Twitter. And it would be in Musk's interests, if there is a total free-for-all when it comes to social media use
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