Wednesday, August 7, 2024 - The wife of a British politician has been arrested for racial hatred after saying rioters should set fire to all the migrant hotels.
Lucie Connolly, who works as a childminder in
Northamptonshire, made vile tweet with the phrase: 'if that makes me racist, so
be it.'
Posting on Twitter, Connolly said: 'Mass deportation
now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care,
while you're at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them.
'I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.'
The message was posted just hours after the death of three
girls, aged six, seven, and nine, at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in
Southport.
The horror knife rampage sparked a slew
of misinformation that spread like wildfire online fuelled by
Russian-linked fake news.
She has since deleted her post and blamed it on 'a moment of
extreme outrage and emotion' when she was acting on 'false and malicious'
information.
Her husband Raymond, who is vice chair of the committee on adult social care at West Northamptonshire Council, responded to the BBC by saying his wife is not racist because she looks after 'Somalian and Bangladeshi kids'.
Northamptonshire Police said that a 41-year-old woman has
been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred after reports of a
hate crime regarding a social media post.
Online childcare community Childcare.co.uk have since
confirmed that they have suspended Connolly following the tweet, after
allegations emerged she had an advert on their platform.
It comes after violent riots have exploded across several
cities including Manchester, Liverpool, Plymouth, and Birmingham following
the Southport knife rampage which claimed the lives of three young girls and
left many others injured.
And just days ago gangs of masked thugs descended on hotels
believed to be housing migrants and asylum seekers, with many starting fire to
the buildings as they threw petrol bombs and projectiles at police.
Approached by the BBC, Cllr Connolly defended his wife, saying that his wife had made one 'stupid, spur of the moment tweet out of frustration and quickly deleted it'
He continued: 'She's a good person and she's not
racist. She's got Somalian and Bangladeshi kids she looks after and she loves
them like they're her own'.
Responding on social media today, Ms. Connolly said: I
regret and apologise for a recent post that I made. Acting on information that
I now know to be false and malicious, and in a moment of extreme outrage and
emotion, I posted words that I realise were wrong in every way.
'I am someone who cares enormously about children, and the
similarity between those beautiful children who were so brutally attacked and
my own daughter overwhelmed me with horror but I should not have expressed that
horror in the way that I did.
'This has been a valuable lesson for me, in realising how
wrong and inaccurate things appearing on social media can be, and I will never
ever react in this way again.'
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