Wife of Tory councillor arrested for inciting racial hatred

Lucie Connolly
Lucie Connolly, who was a childminder, resigned her registration with the regulator Ofsted on Tuesday

The wife of a Tory councillor has been arrested after calling for hotels housing migrants to be set on fire.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, last Monday, Lucie Connolly wrote: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f---ing hotels full of the b------- for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government [and] politicians with them.”

Mrs Connolly, who was a childminder at the time, resigned her registration with Ofsted, the regulator, on Tuesday.

It followed Childcare.co.uk, a listing site, confirming that it had suspended a childminder from advertising on the platform after receiving information about a “highly inappropriate tweet”.

Mrs Connolly was arrested for inciting racial hatred and taken into custody on Tuesday before being released on police bail pending further inquiries.

More than 400 people have been arrested across England and Northern Ireland so far in relation to far-Right riots across the country over recent days.

‘Quickly deleted it’

Mrs Connolly, the wife of Tory councillor Raymond Connolly, is said to have written the post on the same day multiple children were stabbed in an attack that killed three girls in Southport.

The post continued: “I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.”

She later apologised for comments she had made, saying she had acted on “false and malicious” information.

The Southport attacks prompted misinformation to spread online, including false claims that Axel Rudakubana, the suspect, was an asylum seeker.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Connolly, who is the vice chairman of the adult social care committee at West Northamptonshire council, said his wife had made one “stupid, spur of the moment tweet out of frustration and quickly deleted it”.

“She’s a good person and she’s not racist,” he said. “She’s got Somalian and Bangladeshi kids she looks after, and she loves them like they’re her own.”

‘Should not have expressed horror in way I did’

In a post on X on Tuesday evening, Mrs Connolly said: “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 an invaluable lesson for me in realising how wrong and inaccurate things appearing on social media can be.”

A Northamptonshire Police spokesman said: “A 41-year-old woman from Northampton arrested yesterday [Tuesday, Aug 6] on suspicion of inciting racial hatred has been released on police bail pending further enquiries.”