182 - Jailed for a Tweet | Lucy Connolly

About this episode

Lucy Connolly shares her experience of being jailed for a tweet and discusses the implications of her case on free speech in Britain.

12 Months in Peterborough Prison for One Deleted Post Lucy Connolly is a mother and childminder from Northampton. On the evening of the Southport murders in July 2024, she fired off an angry tweet, regretted it within hours, and deleted it. A week later, two police officers knocked on her door. Twelve and a half months later, she finally walked out of HMP Peterborough. Timothy Allen sits down with Lucy for a conversation about what happens when an ordinary mother becomes a national headline, the deleted tweet, the dawn raid, the magistrate's court video link, the women she met inside, the husband she came home to, and the country that locked her up while telling itself it still had free speech. Lucy is on license until March 2027, which means she has to watch every word she says, including in this conversation. She's not bitter. She's funnier than she has any right to be. And she has a lot to say about what Britain has quietly become. In this conversation: The Southport murders, the deleted tweet, and the week between writing it and the police arriving at the door Why Lucy is convinced her arrest was a political takedown of her husband, a Conservative councillor Section 19 of the…

People in this episode

Host: Timothy Allen

Guest: Lucy Connolly

Topics covered

• free speech
• political arrest
• prison experience
• social media consequences
• women in prison
• personal narrative

Keywords

• tweet
• arrest
• prison
• free speech
• Southport murders
• political takedown
• HMP Peterborough
• Virginia McCullough

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: HMP Peterborough, Sodexo, HMP Drake Hall

Places: Northampton, Southport

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