THE WIFE of a Conservative councillor has been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred.
In a post on Twitter/X, Lucy Connolly appeared to call for hotels housing immigrants to be burnt down.
The childminder from Northampton posted the message in the hours after three children were killed in an attack on a children's dance event in Southport on Monday, July 29.
In a statement on Tuesday, Northamptonshire Police said it had received reports of a hate crime regarding a post published on social media.
"In response, a 41-year-old woman from Northampton has been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred and remains in police custody," they added.
Misinformation
In the now deleted post, Mrs Connolly wrote: "Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f*****g hotels full of the b******s for all I care, while you're at it take the treacherous government & politicians with them."
She added: "If that makes me a racist, so be it."
Disorder has spread across cities in England as well as Belfast in the wake of the killings in Southport.
More than 400 arrests have been made and around 100 people have been charged in connection with the disorder.
In the wake of the Southport attack, online misinformation is believed to have fuelled the violence.
Posts spread on social media incorrectly claiming the attacker was an asylum seeker who had arrived in Britain by boat a year earlier and was on an MI6 watchlist.
He was later identified as 17-year-old Cardiff-born Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, with Judge Andrew Menary citing the spread of misinformation as a reason for naming him.
'Wrong in every way'
In a social media post on Tuesday, Mrs Connolly said she regretted 'acting on information that I now know to be false and malicious… in a moment of extreme outrage and emotion'.
"I posted words that I realise were wrong in every way," she added.
"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."
Raymond Connolly, a Conservative councillor on West Northamptonshire Council, told the BBC his wife had made a 'stupid, spur-of-the-moment tweet out of frustration'.
He added: "She's a good person and she’s not racist."
