Was it necessary to send this Facebook poster to prison?

For what was essentially careless speech

Of the hundreds of people arrested in the wake of the riots, one in particular haunts my mind. It’s Julie Sweeney from Church Lawton in Cheshire. She’s a 53-year-old carer for her husband. And this week she was sentenced to 15 months in jail for writing an odious Facebook post while the riots were in full flow. Someone has to ask, and it might as well be me: who benefits from the imprisonment of this lady?

Many will be asking why certain forms of inciting speech seem to be punished more severely and more swiftly than others

Make no mistake: what she wrote was wicked. In response to a Facebook post featuring a photo of people helping to repair the mosque in Southport after it was damaged by riotous bigots, Sweeney said: ‘It’s absolutely ridiculous. Don’t protect the mosque. Blow the mosque up with the adults in it.’ What a vile sentiment. That she thought it is bad enough; that she wrote it down and pressed publish is insane.

She committed a criminal offence. Some of us would like to liberalise the laws around ‘harmful communications’, to ensure that speech that is merely offensive, unwise or alarming is not policed too severely by the state. But the fact is that in the UK in 2024 it is against the law to make a statement as reckless and inciting as ‘blow the mosque up’. It was inevitable that the cops would come knocking for Ms Sweeney.

But a long custodial sentence? Apologies for sounding like a bleeding-heart liberal, but is this necessary? Sweeney has been a carer for her husband since 2015. She has never troubled the law before. She has led a ‘quiet, sheltered life’. She accepts her post was ‘stupid’ and in fact she deleted it not long after posting it. She pleaded guilty to the charge of sending a threatening communication.

Could her sentence not have been suspended? Could she not have been sent home to her husband and her ‘quiet, sheltered’ life, with certain conditions imposed by the court? For instance, she could have been instructed to stay off social media. But 15 months in a cell? For someone who, by all accounts, had a moment of madness online during an explosion of street disorder? ‘Thank you, your honour’, she said, as the judge condemned her to jail. This feels more like a tragedy than justice.

Many will be asking why certain forms of inciting speech seem to be punished more severely and more swiftly than others. We’ve all seen gender crusaders say things like ‘Kill all Terfs’. ‘Decapitate Terfs’, said a banner at a pro-trans rally in Glasgow last year. A year on and Police Scotland insist the case is ‘still open’. Where was the uproar? It’s wrong to say violent-minded things about Muslims but okay to say them about women who believe in women’s rights? Two men have been charged with allegedly chanting about the massacre of Jews on the streets of London in 2021, and yet their trial has been delayed for years. No ‘swift justice’ there.

The post-riots climate is turning ugly. Yes, many of the rioters deserve stiff sentences, especially the weapon-wielding bigots who descended on mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers. But when I read about a 53-year-old carer being banged up for a gross post online, and a 13-year-old girl being convicted of violent disorder, and people getting jailtime for ‘dancing and gesticulating’ at a line of police officers, I can’t help but wonder if this is morphing into a judicial shaming of the lower orders.

Even more striking than the sentences themselves is the complete absence of concern from the activist class. Where are the civil-rights campaigners and left-wing voices who can usually be relied upon to ask ‘Is this a bit much?’ when tough sentences are handed down to certain communities? They asked that question after the 2011 riots. But now they’re schtum. Perhaps the ‘riff raff’ of Britain’s left-behind towns don’t tickle their sympathy bone as much as other sections of society do.

The riots were dreadful. No decent person denies that. Justice must be served. But the dearth of compassion in the aftermath of the riots is starting to feel a little unsettling, too. Here’s my plea for compassion: let Julie Sweeney go home. Wrecking a woman’s life and leaving her husband without care is too high a price to exact for a moment of bigoted lunacy online.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/was-it-necessary-to-send-this-facebook-poster-to-prison/

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