If there was ever any doubt about the existence of a two-tier justice system in the UK, the case of Ricky Jones just eliminated it.
Last Friday, a jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court in London cleared Jones, a now suspended Labour councillor, of encouraging violent disorder at a protest last August. Jones attended a counter-demonstration in Walthamstow, London, in response to a planned right-wing protest—one of many last summer, sparked by the Southport murders. Surrounded by his fellow protestors, Jones made an impassioned speech, captured on video, denouncing the far Right: “They are disgusting Nazi fascists. We need to cut all their throats and get rid of them all.” At this point, Jones drew his finger across his own throat.
The clip subsequently went viral, and Jones was soon arrested and charged. He pleaded not guilty and, a year later, faced a jury of his peers who decided he had not committed any crime.
Jones, rightly, walked free. Words are not violence and should not be treated as such. Contrast this with the example of Lucy Connolly. Despite being arrested and charged at almost the same time, for very similar actions, the outcome for her was completely different.
Connolly, a childminder, mother, and wife of a former Conservative councillor, made a post on X in response to the incident in Southport, when teenager Axel Rudakubana murdered three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop. Connolly, who had lost a child herself, wrote in the heat of the moment, believing as many others did that the killings had been committed by an immigrant: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking 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 now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it.”
For this post, which she deleted just a few hours after posting, Connolly was arrested and charged with inciting racial hatred. Crucially, she pleaded guilty to this and, in October, was sentenced by a judge to 31 months in prison.
Because of this decision to plead guilty, unlike Jones, Connolly did not get the opportunity to appear before a jury. Connolly, like so many other rioters and assorted ‘speech criminals’ during last summer’s protests, was refused bail. Facing long delays before a trial and with a young daughter and chronically ill husband at home, Connolly likely entered her guilty plea in the hopes that it would allow her to be out of jail more quickly. Jones, meanwhile, aided by a top private solicitor rather than a public duty solicitor, was granted bail and had a full year to prepare for his trial.
It’s difficult to see this as anything other than two-tier justice. After all, what meaningful difference is there between a childminder who writes on X that people can set fire to migrant hotels for all she cares and a Labour councillor who declares in front of a protesting crowd that right-wingers deserve to have their throats cut? Why was Jones’s ADHD treated as a more compelling mitigating factor than Connolly’s history of child loss when faced with the news of murdered children? What Jones said was the same as, if not worse than, Connolly’s poorly judged tweet. Yet Jones will walk free, while Connolly is still serving an almost three-year sentence, often confined to her cell with no privileges and reportedly treated unfairly by prison staff. If we care about free speech, then we ought to recognise that Jones did indeed get the verdict he deserved. But Connolly was denied that same decency.
The reality is that, in the UK, the application of the law depends partially on your politics. This has been the case for some time now, predating even Keir Starmer’s Labour government. In 2023, a man identifying as a transgender woman, calling himself Sarah Jane Baker, gave a speech during a trans pride event in London, telling the crowd that: “If you see a TERF [trans-exclusionary radical feminist], punch them in the f**king face.” Baker—who was at the time out on licence while serving a life sentence for attempted kidnap, torture, and murder—was miraculously spared any legal punishment. The judge, Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram, agreed with Baker’s defence that he simply made that comment to drum up “publicity.”
How would the law treat any so-called “TERFs” who made similar statements? This isn’t a hypothetical question. We know that gender-critical women have received knocks at the door for much less. Women have been arrested for ‘misgendering’ trans people online, charged for posting a suffragette ribbon, and had their homes raided for possessing “anti-trans” books and stickers. Had a feminist stood in front of a crowd and encouraged people to “punch a transwoman in the face,” she would no doubt have been swiftly arrested, charged, and slapped with a hefty fine or even a prison sentence.
We saw a similar instance of this last year, during Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s election campaign in Clacton. OnlyFans model Victoria Thomas Bowen threw a milkshake at Farage as a weird form of political protest. Thomas Bowen pleaded guilty to assault by beating and criminal damage, and was given a 13-week jail sentence, suspended for 12 months. She also had to complete 120 hours of unpaid work and pay Farage £150 in compensation. (Oddly enough, the judge who doled out this sentence was the same one who gave Sarah Jane Baker a free pass.) By contrast, in 2019, pro-Brexit campaigner John Murphy threw an egg at then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Murphy also pleaded guilty to assault by beating and was sentenced to 28 days in prison. Unlike Thomas Bowen’s, Murphy’s sentence was not suspended, meaning he had to actually spend time behind bars.
Perhaps the most galling part about all of this is that the state continues to pretend there is no such thing as two-tier justice. When asked about the issue last summer by a journalist, the chief of the Metropolitan Police grabbed the reporter’s microphone and threw it to the ground in a tantrum. To this day, legal higher-ups will deny there is anything untoward at play. Just recently, the UK attorney general, Lord Hermer, said that calling the legal system hypocritical was “frankly disgusting.”
If you dare speak out against the blatant two-tier justice, the government will brand you as a far-right extremist. The Telegraph revealed last month that a unit in Whitehall was keeping tabs on people who complained online about the UK’s unfair justice system, in case this “exacerbated tensions.” A leaked government report from early this year also warns that those who are concerned about two-tier policing feed into an “extreme right-wing narrative.”
At this point, no one can reasonably deny that the law in the UK is often applied based on how socially acceptable a defendant’s opinions are. In Ricky Jones’s case, the jury made the right call in finding him not guilty, and, as free-speech advocates, we should always push back against the idea that words can be crimes. But that doesn’t change the fact that Lucy Connolly should never have gone to jail either. One of the most basic expectations in a civilised democracy is that all will be judged equally under the law. In modern Britain, this is no longer guaranteed.
In the UK, Two-Tier Justice Is Now Undeniable
Police officers arrest a protester at a demonstration.
Peter Powell / AFP
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If there was ever any doubt about the existence of a two-tier justice system in the UK, the case of Ricky Jones just eliminated it.
Last Friday, a jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court in London cleared Jones, a now suspended Labour councillor, of encouraging violent disorder at a protest last August. Jones attended a counter-demonstration in Walthamstow, London, in response to a planned right-wing protest—one of many last summer, sparked by the Southport murders. Surrounded by his fellow protestors, Jones made an impassioned speech, captured on video, denouncing the far Right: “They are disgusting Nazi fascists. We need to cut all their throats and get rid of them all.” At this point, Jones drew his finger across his own throat.
The clip subsequently went viral, and Jones was soon arrested and charged. He pleaded not guilty and, a year later, faced a jury of his peers who decided he had not committed any crime.
Jones, rightly, walked free. Words are not violence and should not be treated as such. Contrast this with the example of Lucy Connolly. Despite being arrested and charged at almost the same time, for very similar actions, the outcome for her was completely different.
Connolly, a childminder, mother, and wife of a former Conservative councillor, made a post on X in response to the incident in Southport, when teenager Axel Rudakubana murdered three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop. Connolly, who had lost a child herself, wrote in the heat of the moment, believing as many others did that the killings had been committed by an immigrant: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking 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 now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it.”
For this post, which she deleted just a few hours after posting, Connolly was arrested and charged with inciting racial hatred. Crucially, she pleaded guilty to this and, in October, was sentenced by a judge to 31 months in prison.
Because of this decision to plead guilty, unlike Jones, Connolly did not get the opportunity to appear before a jury. Connolly, like so many other rioters and assorted ‘speech criminals’ during last summer’s protests, was refused bail. Facing long delays before a trial and with a young daughter and chronically ill husband at home, Connolly likely entered her guilty plea in the hopes that it would allow her to be out of jail more quickly. Jones, meanwhile, aided by a top private solicitor rather than a public duty solicitor, was granted bail and had a full year to prepare for his trial.
It’s difficult to see this as anything other than two-tier justice. After all, what meaningful difference is there between a childminder who writes on X that people can set fire to migrant hotels for all she cares and a Labour councillor who declares in front of a protesting crowd that right-wingers deserve to have their throats cut? Why was Jones’s ADHD treated as a more compelling mitigating factor than Connolly’s history of child loss when faced with the news of murdered children? What Jones said was the same as, if not worse than, Connolly’s poorly judged tweet. Yet Jones will walk free, while Connolly is still serving an almost three-year sentence, often confined to her cell with no privileges and reportedly treated unfairly by prison staff. If we care about free speech, then we ought to recognise that Jones did indeed get the verdict he deserved. But Connolly was denied that same decency.
The reality is that, in the UK, the application of the law depends partially on your politics. This has been the case for some time now, predating even Keir Starmer’s Labour government. In 2023, a man identifying as a transgender woman, calling himself Sarah Jane Baker, gave a speech during a trans pride event in London, telling the crowd that: “If you see a TERF [trans-exclusionary radical feminist], punch them in the f**king face.” Baker—who was at the time out on licence while serving a life sentence for attempted kidnap, torture, and murder—was miraculously spared any legal punishment. The judge, Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram, agreed with Baker’s defence that he simply made that comment to drum up “publicity.”
How would the law treat any so-called “TERFs” who made similar statements? This isn’t a hypothetical question. We know that gender-critical women have received knocks at the door for much less. Women have been arrested for ‘misgendering’ trans people online, charged for posting a suffragette ribbon, and had their homes raided for possessing “anti-trans” books and stickers. Had a feminist stood in front of a crowd and encouraged people to “punch a transwoman in the face,” she would no doubt have been swiftly arrested, charged, and slapped with a hefty fine or even a prison sentence.
We saw a similar instance of this last year, during Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s election campaign in Clacton. OnlyFans model Victoria Thomas Bowen threw a milkshake at Farage as a weird form of political protest. Thomas Bowen pleaded guilty to assault by beating and criminal damage, and was given a 13-week jail sentence, suspended for 12 months. She also had to complete 120 hours of unpaid work and pay Farage £150 in compensation. (Oddly enough, the judge who doled out this sentence was the same one who gave Sarah Jane Baker a free pass.) By contrast, in 2019, pro-Brexit campaigner John Murphy threw an egg at then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Murphy also pleaded guilty to assault by beating and was sentenced to 28 days in prison. Unlike Thomas Bowen’s, Murphy’s sentence was not suspended, meaning he had to actually spend time behind bars.
Perhaps the most galling part about all of this is that the state continues to pretend there is no such thing as two-tier justice. When asked about the issue last summer by a journalist, the chief of the Metropolitan Police grabbed the reporter’s microphone and threw it to the ground in a tantrum. To this day, legal higher-ups will deny there is anything untoward at play. Just recently, the UK attorney general, Lord Hermer, said that calling the legal system hypocritical was “frankly disgusting.”
If you dare speak out against the blatant two-tier justice, the government will brand you as a far-right extremist. The Telegraph revealed last month that a unit in Whitehall was keeping tabs on people who complained online about the UK’s unfair justice system, in case this “exacerbated tensions.” A leaked government report from early this year also warns that those who are concerned about two-tier policing feed into an “extreme right-wing narrative.”
At this point, no one can reasonably deny that the law in the UK is often applied based on how socially acceptable a defendant’s opinions are. In Ricky Jones’s case, the jury made the right call in finding him not guilty, and, as free-speech advocates, we should always push back against the idea that words can be crimes. But that doesn’t change the fact that Lucy Connolly should never have gone to jail either. One of the most basic expectations in a civilised democracy is that all will be judged equally under the law. In modern Britain, this is no longer guaranteed.
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