DO THE CASES OF LUCY CONNOLLY & RICKY JONES DEMONSTRATE TWO TIER JUSTICE?
- josephchiffers
- Sep 25
- 7 min read
This article is about the cases of Lucy Connelly and Ricky Jones and whether they reveal a form of two-tier justice.
Due to pressure of work, I have been slow in commenting on this subject. I hope that I can make up for this lateness by offering a different perspective to the ones you are likely to have already heard.
With this in mind, I have encountered two perspectives. The first perspective is that the contrast clearly shows the delivery of two-tier justice; Jones, a left-wing activist appeared to be caught on video explicitly advocating violence to a crowd and received no sentence, whereas Connolly merely made a comment online, which might broadly be associated with right wing politics and received a prison sentence of 2 years and 7 months. Connolly’s comment, which was swiftly deleted, referenced arson attacks against hotels accommodating asylum seekers, but used the words “for all I care”.
The second perspective is to argue that the comparison between the cases is wholly fallacious because Connolly pleaded guilty whereas Jones took his chances with a jury and was acquitted.
I have been unimpressed with both perspectives; the second perspective is true in a narrow sense, but also trite. I essentially agree with the first perspective, but it has not been properly explained; I would describe it as a stab in the dark.
Neither perspective has considered the political reality behind law making, which is what I will attempt to do, in this brief article.
I will begin by considering the political history to the specific offence that Connolly was convicted of, namely incitement to racial hatred contrary to section 19(1) of the Public Order Act 1986. This appears to derive from the Race Relations Act of 1965, which first made it an offence to incite racial hatred.
The stated purpose of that bill was to maintain social cohesion, in other words a political aim[1]:
“The whole purpose of this Bill, which I profoundly hope will be achieved, is to bring harmony, harmonious relationships, into our community, and not the reverse. It would be a major failure if the reverse ensued as the result of provisions of this Bill. We have introduced it, as I have said on a number of occasions, because we are face to face with a new and major social problem—the presence with us of a very considerable number of settlers from Commonwealth countries. The primary purpose of this Bill is to enable them to be settled happily into the community as fellow citizens and to prevent the kind of action which is wounding and provokes ill-will and bad feeling. That is the object of this Bill, and it has been designed for that purpose.”[2]
Thus, the offence for which Connolly was convicted was a political one, as opposed to for instance, laws prohibiting violence against the person, which can be enforced in an apolitical manner. The offence was effectively designed to restrict the speech of the opponents of a multi-cultural and multi-racial society.[3] Prosecutions for the offence can only be brought with the consent of the Attorney General, a Government Minister who attends Cabinet meetings.[4]
When the offence was originally drafted, it covered an intention to stir up racial hatred. This was then expanded to cover being reckless as to the stirring up of racial hatred and further expanded to include situations where racial hatred is likely to be stirred up, even without intention or recklessness. Whilst Connolly was convicted of intending to stir up racial hatred as per the original offence, the expansion demonstrates a legislative attempt to cast the net wider to catch a higher number of the regime’s ideological opponents. Yet again this is consistent with the offence having a political aim.
Jones was charged with ‘encouraging violent disorder’ , see - https://www.cps.gov.uk/london-north/news/cps-authorises-charge-against-former-labour-councillor
There is no reference in the above to a specific statutory offence. It appears that Jones was charged with encouraging violent disorder, contrary to section 45 of the Serious Crime Act 2007 and section 2(1) of the Public Order Act 1986.
This would mean that the Prosecution would have needed to prove the following:
The Defendant acted
The act could have encouraged violent disorder
The Defendant believed that violent disorder would be committed, and
That his act would encourage the violent disorder.
We can never know why the jury acquitted the Defendant, but it would be reasonable to infer that they were unsure whether he intended for his words to lead to violent disorder. Whilst the words captured on video appear to be an unambiguous call to violence, the jury will have heard evidence as to whether Jones’ intended for the crowd to act on his words.
One can note that it is more difficult for the prosecution to prove the offence in the Jones case than in the Conolly case, where the latter’s offence has been subject to a Parliamentary moving of the goal posts, although admittedly Connolly was charged with ‘inciting racial hatred’, as the offence was originally drafted.
Jones’ case is intuitively far closer to what one would expect to be covered by a ‘public order’ act which is designed to prevent public disorder. The reason for this is that Jones was addressing a crowd in person and he used fighting words. In contract, Connolly was online and used the qualifying words ‘for all I care’, which are inconsistent with incitement of a specific act.
Indeed, she was charged with inciting ‘racial hatred’, which is vaguer than inciting violence. Confusingly however, in the sentencing judgment Connolly’s sentence was based on her admission (the existence of which she unsuccessfully sought to challenge on appeal), that she had intended to incite violence. An explanation for this apparent contradiction is outside the scope of this article.
As Jones was not convicted, we do not know what the judge would have said when sentencing him, although he is unlikely to have said:
"It is a strength of our society that it is both diverse and inclusive"
The above words were said by the judge when passing sentence on Connolly. This is a political view being expressed and it has been repeated in other sentencing judgments for the same or similar offences, for instance:
“You show this hatred by publicly directing abusive threats at others which is a criminal offence in this multi- racial society we are lucky enough to live in.”[5]
I would query whether this remark is something that judges are encouraged or even directed to make in their training, when passing sentences for these types of offence.
Therefore, whilst the two cases could be said to merely show the different choices made by each Defendant (as per the second of the two perspectives described above), they also show the legislative priority of the current Executive and previous Executives since at least the 1965 Race Relations Act.
Indeed, the fact that the state devotes any of its finite resources to seeking to prosecute Defendants for making online comments that do not cause any tangible harm, says something about its ideology and priorities; see the following quote below in relation to the resources expended for inciting racial hatred as opposed to crimes causing tangible harm such as burglary:
“Last December, British police arrested two leaders of the anti-immigration British National Party—Nick Griffin and the BNP’s founder, John Tyndall—because hidden cameras (not for speeders or for collecting revenue but for spying) had recorded them saying unkind things about Islam. Mr. Griffin reportedly called it “a wicked religion.” The West Yorkshire police boasted that they had deployed a team of officers for the Griffin case “five days a week, ten hours a day.” As Rod Liddle, a reporter for the London Spectator, commented in an article about the case:
Now at this point in the article, a really good journalist would tell you how big that team of policemen was. And how much the investigation had cost the taxpayer. And also cross-referenced it with how many burglaries, muggings, etc., had been carried out in the West Yorkshire area from July to 12 December. Especially unsolved ones. But I haven’t been able to find that stuff out: the police won’t tell me. But let’s just remember: a team of police officers, five days a week, ten hours per day.
Just as hidden financial interests were the immediate reasons for the deployment of traffic cameras in Washington, there were hidden political reasons for the round-up of Mr. Griffin, a Cambridge-educated lawyer who was planning on standing for Parliament in the constituency of David Blunkett, then home secretary in the Blair regime. The Home Office, as the Spectator article made fairly clear, seems to have had more than a little to do with the Griffin bust.”[6]
In conclusion, I think the two cases do show a form of two-tier justice; it may or may not have been justified for the jury to have acquitted Jones based on the specific facts and their application to the specific offence.
However, the fact that, Connolly was charged with at all, that it would have been easier for the prosecution to prove their case against her than Jones and that Connolly’s offence has been expanded to make convictions easier, says a lot about the current regime and its doctrinaire legislation.
[1] https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1965-07-16/debates/2bc28978-2ebe-42f6-afe5-33ee70280b50/RaceRelationsBill
[2] Sir Frank Soskice then Home Secretary – Hansard – column 978 https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1965-07-16/debates/2bc28978-2ebe-42f6-afe5-33ee70280b50/RaceRelationsBill#main-content The offence is part of the same jurisprudence that increases sentences where an offence is ‘racially aggravated’ and ‘racially motivated’.
[3] In theory the offence could be applied to racial minorities who incite violence against the native majority and whilst there may be some instances of this (I am unaware of any), this does not appear to occur in practice – see this case https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/bahar-mustafa-charges-dropped-killallwhitemen-row.
[4] Section 27(1) POA 1986
Comments