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The wife of a Tory councillor has been arrested for hate crimes after she called for hotels with asylum seekers in them to be set ablaze.
Lucy Connolly, 41, took to X (formerly Twitter) writing: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f***ing hotels full of the b******* for all I care... If that makes me racist, so be it.”
She has since deleted the tweet and apologised, claiming she had acted on “false and malicious” information. But a number of people made complaints to the police about her allegedly inciting violence.
Northamptonshire Police confirmed on Tuesday night that a 41-year-old woman had been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred and remains in custody.
The childminder posted the comments on her X account just hours after the fatal stabbing of three schoolgirls at a dance class in Southport on 29 July.
At the time a number of false claims and misinformation was being posted on the social media site from far-right groups which led to a riot in the seaside resort.
Among the false claims was that the murder suspect, Axel Rudakubana, was a “Muslim immigrant”.
The full post read: “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.”
Referring to the families of the girls in Southport, she added: “I feel physically sick know what these families now will have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it.”
Mrs Connolly is married to Tory Northamptonshire councillor Raymond Connolly, who is vice chairman of the committee on adult social care at West Northamptonshire Council.
He told the BBC his wife made a “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”.
In another post 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.”
It has been reported more than 400 people have been arrested over alleged involvement in the far-right riots.
Police are bracing themselves for more protests on Wednesday targeting immigration centres and asylum lawyers.
A Conservative Party source said Mrs Connolly is not a party member.
