The chilling real reason I fear is behind the ludicrous decision to jail devoted mother Lucy Connolly for her ‘racist’ tweet after the Southport stabbings: JENNI MURRAY

There is no doubt that Lucy Connolly did a very stupid, very offensive thing in the heat of her upset after Axel Rudakubana attacked girls at a dance class in Southport last July.

Here’s what the Northampton childminder and wife of a Tory councillor tweeted: ‘Mass deportation now; set fire to all the f***ing hotels full of the bastards 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 have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.’

It astonishes me that, after all this time and our current awareness of the risks posed by social media, an educated professional woman of 41 could have felt it was safe to publish such a violent, hateful tweet.

The crime in Southport had given rise to rioting and, indeed, a hotel housing migrants in Tamworth would be set on fire a few days later. It was widely – and wrongly – assumed that the Southport attacker, 18-year-old Rudakubana was a recent migrant. He was not. His Rwandan parents had settled in Britain in 2002 and he was born in Cardiff.

It’s clear that Connolly soon regretted what she had posted. After she pinged off the tweet she took her family dog out for a walk, calmed down, thought better of what she’d written in the heat of the moment, went home and took the tweet down.

She was too late. It had only been up for four hours, but it had been read 310,000 times. Someone had seen it, been rightly offended by it and took a screenshot. Lucy was arrested and charged under Section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986. Her crime was the publication of material intending to stir up racial hatred, which carries a maximum seven-year sentence.

It’s impossible to feel any sympathy for her approval of setting fire to migrant hotels or for not caring about being seen as racist, but her intense sympathy for the families of those poor little girls is understandable when we learn that she and her husband lost their first born, Harry, at the age of 19 months as a result of a failure in NHS care. She knows what it’s like to grieve for a child.

But no such sympathy came her way when her case came to court, despite extensive support from those who knew her. Parents of all races praised the care she had given to their children. Their views appeared to have no influence on Judge Melbourne Inman KC who heard her case at Birmingham Crown Court.

It may seem surprising that Connolly pleaded guilty, but she had learned from other prisoners on remand that waiting for a court date could take a very long time if you were pleading not guilty and she was desperate to get home to her husband Ray and their 12-year-old daughter Holly. If a guilty plea would hurry things along she said she didn’t give a damn about having a criminal record.

But a 31-month prison sentence must have come as a terrible shock. The judge made a direct link between Lucy’s short-lived tweet to ‘serious disorder in a number of areas in the country where mindless violence was used to cause injury and damage to wholly innocent members of the public and their properties’. He described her culpability as ‘clearly a category A case – as both prosecution and your counsel agree because you intended to incite serious violence’.

But for a woman who clearly regretted her hot headedness, removed the tweet within hours of posting it and apologised that seems ridiculous. Lucy did not participate in any of the violence she appeared to support, but some of the men who were physically involved in the riots were given two- or three-year sentences. How can being found guilty of violent disorder be the same as posting a furious, thoughtless tweet, then quickly thinking better of it?

Lucy was given a harsher punishment than many men guilty of domestic violence against women. According to the charity Refuge, if convicted, perpetrators – usually dangerous repeat offenders who pose a very real threat if they aren’t behind bars – often receive 12 months or less.

Meanwhile, rapists are rarely caught, rarely charged and rarely found guilty of a crime which merits a good long prison sentence.

As for vile tweets, at times I am still seized with fear if I recall horrific messages I received on social media when I dared to write that I didn’t believe trans women could call themselves real women. They cannot change their sex, only their gender.

I suffered months of online threats. A few were determined to rape me, several thought murder was the only way to silence this ‘gobby Terf’. I didn’t report any of them to the police. I didn’t believe anything would be done if I did.

Thanks to Adolescence, we all know about Incels (Involuntary celibates) online and Andrew Tate encouraging young men to treat women badly… where are the people ready to jump on those violently misogynistic tweets and report them to the police as someone was prepared to do with Lucy?

I wonder if including her anger at government and politicians weighed against her. Was she too open about a view, shared I’m sure by many, that not enough was being done to sort out immigration and ease the pressure on public services and taxpayers’ money? Was Lucy used as a warning to others, suggesting we all keep our mouths shut? That is not what the justice system is about.

Lucy now faces more upset as she’s been refused ROTL – Release on Temporary Licence. It’s a policy which allows prisoners to leave for short periods, prior to release, to maintain family ties. Lucy is desperate to be at home with her daughter, who is said to have been having problems at school.

Lucy’s probation officer could see no reason for her not being allowed out, but was allegedly told by a prison official there was no way Lucy could be let out on a tag ‘because of Press and public perception’.

I warrant a majority of the public would think this mother should be home with her daughter. She presents no risk of violence to the community. She deserved to be punished for a hateful, cruel, racist tweet. Her apology should have been accepted. She should have been given a substantial fine and left to live with the terrible shame I’m sure she still feels. Prison, in this case, was entirely inappropriate.