Engineer given half Lucy Connolly's sentence for near-identical tweet
Joseph Haythorne, 26, posted 'Go on Rotherham burn any hotels with those scruffy b------- in it' on Aug 4 2024, just as violence erupted in the South Yorkshire town.
The engineer from Surrey, who admitted inciting racial hatred, was jailed for 15 months when he appeared at Sheffield Crown Court on Wednesday.
Critics branded the sentence a 'clear example of two-tier justice'.
His jail term is less than half the 31 months handed down to Connolly - a mother of one who is married to a Conservative councillor.
She was jailed in October last year, after posting online, on the day of the Southport murders, a message that read: 'Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f---ing hotels full of the b------s for all I care, while you're at it take the treacherous government politicians with them.'
The 42-year-old, who lost a child of her own in tragic circumstances, deleted the post fewer than four hours later, but not before it had been viewed 310,000 times.
Her husband, Ray Connolly told the Telegraph: 'He can thank his lucky stars his partner isn't a Tory councillor.'
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary said: 'There are a lot of inconsistencies in sentencing. A rapist recently received only 28 months and Attorney General, Lord Hermer refused to allow that sentence to be reviewed.
'It cannot be right that Lucy Connolly got a longer sentence for a tweet than someone convicted of rape.'
Speaking about the sentence handed to Haythorne, Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, said: 'Another ludicrous jail sentence. Fifteen months for a nasty offensive tweet lasting 17 minutes.
'On this basis, if justice is consistent [and] not two tier, then Bob Vylan could face being jailed for over five years for his vile singing at Glastonbury.'
Lord Young, general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said: 'This is not a good use of valuable prison spaces that should be kept for thieves, muggers, stabbers and drug dealers.
'How can it be right that a Labour MP who repeatedly punched a constituent, knocking him to the ground, received a suspended sentence, but a 26 year-old should be jailed for 15 months for one ill-advised tweet?
'It's a clear example of two-tier justice and risks undermining public confidence in our criminal justice system.'
Haythorne's tweet was posted just an hour and a half before violence erupted outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Rotherham.
More than 60 police officers were hurt and rioters also set fire to a bin and pushed it towards the hotel which had more than 250 people inside.
Sheffield Crown Court heard that his post, from an anonymous account, was viewed by 1,100 people in 17 minutes before he deleted it. He subsequently handed himself into police.
Prosecutors said the case did have some similarities with that of Connolly with the judge, Jeremy Richardson KC described the comment as 'vile'.
But he chose to significantly reduce his sentence after hearing Haythorne suffered from clinical depression. He also gave him credit for his guilty plea and other personal mitigation.
The judge said: 'It gives me no pleasure whatsoever in sending someone like you to prison because you have many positive attributes in life.
'But unfortunately, in that whole episode in August of last year, whilst there were some very bad people conducting themselves very badly, there were also a number of otherwise perfectly good people who did something very bad, and you are in that category.'
In May, Connolly asked the Court of Appeal to reduce her sentence but her application was refused with three judges saying they did not believe 31 months was excessive.
Her husband, who has been looking after their 12-year-old daughter, described the decision as 'shocking and unfair' and said it was an example of 'two-tier justice'.
He said: 'Lucy got more time in jail for one tweet than some paedophiles and domestic abusers get. I think the system wanted to make an example of Lucy so other people would be scared to say things about immigration. This is not the British way.'
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The 'dangerous' loner who tried to kidnap Princess Anne is back on the streets – unrepentant and still obsessed. Mentally ill Ian Ball, then 26, stalked the Princess Royal one evening in March 1974, before ambushing her chauffeur-driven limousine and shooting four men who came to her aid. At his Old Bailey trial he was detained 'without limit of time' under the Mental Health Act after admitting attempted kidnap and two attempted murders – but the Daily Mail can reveal he is out of Broadmoor and is now campaigning to clear his name. He has been released on probation and can roam freely – despite remaining fixated on that night on The Mall. After being released quietly in 2019, Ball self-published a disturbing book about the events of 1974 and visits old haunts in a bid to prove his innocence, despite having pleaded guilty in court. In an extraordinary interview with the Daily Mail, Ball, now 77, said: 'I'm an innocent, sane man because I had good reason to believe the gunpowder had been taken out of the bullets and another girl had been substituted for Princess Anne.' He claims he was wrongfully jailed by the 'upper classes' – speculating that the late Queen was the 'ring-leader', and saying they had kept 'an innocent, sane man in a criminal lunatic asylum because he is a very dangerous working-class dissenter and a grave threat to their luxurious way of living'. Ball insisted it would be a 'waste of time' to apologise to the men he shot, and said of Anne, who had two guns waved in her face: 'She wasn't bothered on the night... I didn't scare her. I was more scared than she was.' The Daily Mail understands that Princess Anne and royal security chiefs were told of his release. Buckingham Palace declined to comment. But a relative of Ball's wept on learning he was back to obsessing over the case. The relation, who asked not to be named, said: 'It would seem he really is not very well and the obsession with all this has overtaken him again. I knew he was out of Broadmoor, but some members of the family didn't, and it will come as a shock to them. 'He has written to me a couple of times and seemed much better. There was nothing to indicate he still had serious mental health problems. He had been doing normal things. He had been abroad on holiday, he was going to the theatre, everyday activities. 'I understood he was living in some sort of hostel, and you would assume he is still receiving some sort of treatment.' When he appeared at the Old Bailey in May 1974, two months after the incident, Ball made no attempt to deny attempted kidnap, attempting to murder two policemen, and wounding a chauffeur and a journalist. He admitted skidding his Ford Escort to a halt in front of Princess Anne's car, then holding her up at gunpoint, grabbing her arm and threatening to shoot her. At one stage, a tug-of-war developed over the princess, with Ball pulling her right arm, and her husband, Captain Mark Phillips, her left, ripping her velvet dress. In front of multiple witnesses Ball used two guns to shoot her police bodyguard, her chauffeur, a police constable and a journalist who rushed to help, until a passing boxer helped police to subdue him. It was only by chance that no one died. Yet since being freed, Ball has waged an extraordinary campaign to prove his innocence. His claims were laid out in a self-published 'autobiographical novel', To Kidnap A Princess, he has been selling openly, yet unnoticed, on Amazon since 2022. The 'dramatic and exciting' 150-page book displays a stark failure to comprehend the gravity of his crimes, with a blurb that says: 'It will make you laugh, make you cry, but ultimately leave you in wonder at the indomitability of the human spirit.' To further his aim of proving his bloody kidnap attempt was a 'hoax gone wrong', in recent months he has progressed to paying casual workers £15 an hour to deliver thousands of leaflets to his home town in west London. The leaflets invite anyone with memories of him half a century ago to meet him at a central location at a set time every month. Ball also uses his Facebook and X account, on which he describes himself as 'a complete fruit cake', to post messages seeking help in appealing against his conviction and claiming compensation. He maintains a PO Box for deliveries away from his hostel. He has continued to use the pseudonym 'Anthony Stewart', which he adopted before his kidnap attempt, and he maintains the convoluted excuse, which he first made six months after pleading guilty, that his kidnap attempt was a hoax staged with the help of a policeman 'friend' he knew only as 'Frank'. Ball long waged his campaign from Rampton and Broadmoor secure mental hospitals, but is now doing so from his hostel room on a council estate near Notting Hill, west London. He has also been spending the tens of thousands of pounds he claims he saved up in benefit payments on trips to Barbados and Japan. Tellingly, he complains he never left Tokyo airport, because he admitted to his criminal record on arrival and was deported. Last night, a Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'Restricted patients can be recalled back to hospital if their mental health deteriorates such that the risk they pose becomes unmanageable in the community.' The Daily Mail understands thorough risk assessments are meant to be made on 'restricted patients' such as Ball before they are freed into the community, and doctors have the power to 'manage the risk to the public'. Fantasy world of sick loner and his extraordinary bid to kidnap a young Princess Anne from her limo on The Mall that ended when she told him: 'Not bloody likely!' The last time a journalist approached Ian Ball – the man who tried to kidnap a princess – he shot him in the chest. Back on a bloody night in 1974, Ball also attempted to murder two policemen and shot a chauffeur, while trying to drag Princess Anne from her limousine, shackle her in his hideout, and demand £3million ransom from the Queen. The Princess, who turned 75 last month, was later revealed to have rejected his instructions to join him by replying: 'Not bloody likely.' Small wonder that amid admitting his crimes, and being detained in secure mental hospitals as a schizophrenic, Ball said at the time: 'I suppose I'll be locked up for the rest of my life.' Yet half a century on, now aged 77 himself, he was last week sitting on a canal-side bench not three miles from Buckingham Palace. So I approached this once trigger-happy kidnapper with apprehension, despite his aged stoop. For he has been waging an intensifying campaign to prove the kidnap plan was a 'hoax', worrying residents of his old home town. His campaign involves a disturbing 'autobiographical novel', a website, Facebook and Twitter postings, offers of rewards anywhere from £50 to £1million, mass leafleting and visits to old west London haunts. For decades – firstly from within Broadmoor, from where he was quietly freed in 2019, and now in the outside world – he has been claiming his kidnap 'hoax' was cooked up with the knowledge of an officer from a local police station he knew only as 'Frank'. Ball claims the untraceable – and almost certainly non-existent – 'Frank' was meant to have removed the gunpowder from his bullets and substituted another woman for Princess Anne. And within minutes of sitting beside him on the canal-side bench near Notting Hill last week, Ball told me: 'The whole idea of performing the hoax was to get the publicity so I could write my autobiography, and I expected to get £10,000 in royalties. 'To prove my innocence I need to prove the existence of Frank. That will prove I had reason to believe it was all a hoax.' He denied Princess Anne had uttered her infamous line 'Not bloody likely', laughing as he evidently doubted it was her in the car that night. 'She said, 'You just go away and nobody will think any more about it', which fuelled the belief that I thought it was a hoax,' Ball insisted. 'At the time I thought it wasn't Princess Anne in the car. She looked nothing like Princess Anne. The personality was nothing like Princess Anne.' Despite having only a fleeting moment in the presence of the Princess in the most extreme of circumstances 51 years ago, he claimed: 'If it had been the Princess there, she would have told me to 'F*** off', wouldn't she. That's her personality.' What actually happened on The Mall near Buckingham Palace on March 20, 1974 – along with the three years' planning Ball put into it – was laid out in the Old Bailey two months later. Attorney General Samuel Silkin QC, prosecuting, said the facts were 'stranger than fiction', adding: 'There can be no doubt Ball conceived over many years a horrifying plan, with almost obsessive care and detail, to kidnap single-handed in the heart of London a member of the Royal Family.' Ball, then 26, was brought up on a council estate in Cowley, near Uxbridge, west London, largely by his mother Violet, after his father, George, died when he was five. On leaving his secondary modern school with six O-levels, he raced through seven jobs, including at a funeral directors, never interacting with colleagues, and by his own barrister's account with 'no girlfriends, no friends at all'. He had left home in his early twenties, a relative said later, after spending three years living with his mother but not speaking a word to her, communicating only in written notes. Diagnosed as mentally ill during that time, he declined in-patient treatment. Then, living a lonely life in a bedsit in Bayswater, west London – a short walk from his hostel now – Ball plotted 'the perfect crime' to raise money for fast cars and luxury. He wrote a list of potential victims, telling police he settled on Princess Anne as 'the only girl in the Royal Family and she would have been the easiest. I have seen her and her husband out riding'. He flew to Spain in 1973 and legally bought two pistols, a .38 calibre and a .22, bringing them back through Heathrow's 'Nothing to declare' lane. He had already paid for private flying lessons, while refusing his mother's demands for rent, and gained his private pilot's licence at Biggin Hill airport in Kent. Ball also got a driving licence in the name of 'John Williams', one of several false identities he used having been inspired by Frederick Forsyth's 1971 thriller The Day Of The Jackal. After renting a house near Sandhurst, Berkshire, home of newlywed Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips, he stocked it with bedding, food, nightwear and a toothbrush, and for several days stalked her movements. He planned to hold her there before piloting a private plane to Zurich – with the £3million ransom and the princess in handcuffs – then send her back on arrival. Ball's ludicrous ransom note – addressed to the Queen and beginning, 'Your daughter has been kidnapped' – demanded £3million in used £5 notes 'in 30 unlocked suitcases' to be brought to his waiting plane at London Airport (now Heathrow). He said the Queen herself would have to come to see him – proving her identity by giving a sample signature, rather than just holding her picture on one of the 600,000 used fivers by her face. The Queen was also expected to bring 'a free pardon to cover the kidnapping and anything connected with it, from parking offences to the murder of any police officers'. On March 20, Ball phoned the Buckingham Palace press office and asked where the princess would be that night. Astonishingly, they told him. So he was lurking in his Ford Escort, handcuffs and Valium in the boot, when Anne's Austin Vanden Plas Princess limousine was driven away from a City of London charity film screening. Chauffeur Alex Callender was at the wheel and armed royal protection officer Inspector James Beaton was in the passenger seat. Anne, then 23, was in the back, along with Captain Phillips and lady-in-waiting Rowena Brassey. Ball tailed them down Fleet Street and The Strand, around Trafalgar Square, then down The Mall. In his trashy, thriller-style book, To Kidnap A Princess, Ball says his engine 'screamed in protest' as he hit 70mph before skidding to a halt in front of the royal limousine, forcing it to stop. Bearded and wearing a raincoat, he ran to Princess Anne's door, brandishing both his guns, and ordered her to get out. Inspector Beaton emerged and drew his gun, so Ball shot him in the shoulder. The bodyguard's gun then jammed. Ball shouted, 'Put down your gun or I'll shoot her', and, wounded, Inspector Beaton complied. Ball then attempted to encourage and pull the Princess out – Captain Phillips pulling back on her other arm – as she uttered her 'Not bloody likely' line. Inspector Beaton crawled back, put his hand in front of Ball's guns and was shot in the palm, before taking a third bullet in the chest. A fragment of the bullet remains in his hand to this day. Ball shot chauffeur Mr Callender in the chest before blasting PC Michael Hills, 22 – who was rushing to the scene – in the stomach. He was injured but survived only because the bullet hit the police notebook in his pocket. Daily Mirror journalist Brian McConnell, who happened to be passing, leapt from his taxi to reason with Ball before he, too, was shot in the chest. Only the chance arrival of 6ft 2in, 17-stone former heavyweight boxer Ronnie 'The Geezer' Russell in a cleaning firm van turned the tide. Thinking, he said later, 'that's a liberty – he needs sorting', Russell subdued Ball with several massive punches as police arrived and bundled him to the floor. Ball then – as now – displayed no remorse, saying: 'They were getting in my way so I had to shoot them. Well, the police, that's their job. They expect to be shot. I took a chance of getting shot – so why shouldn't they?' After his guilty plea, John Hazan QC, defending, said he was 'mad', and had been 'led by a voice either of his late father or God'. In mitigation, Mr Hazan said the ransom was intended to be a donation to the NHS to improve the mental-health provision that had failed Ball. It was only last week, when I asked whether the NHS would have been likely to accept £3million in used fivers that Ball admitted: 'That was rubbish. I couldn't think of anything else to say. I was quite happy with my treatment in the NHS.' During his appearance at the Old Bailey, no one in court doubted that Ball was both guilty and mentally ill. Some 45 years in Rampton and Broadmoor secure mental hospitals ensued. Then – unknown till now – his freedom came in 2019. In an extraordinary 'autobiographical novel', To Kidnap A Princess, self-published in 2022 and for sale on Amazon, he tells how he 'revealed' his hoax excuse in 1974 after six months inside. He remains amazed he was not released immediately. While the nature of the book is masked flimsily with the statement, 'This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination', it is in his name, begins with the attempt to kidnap Princess Anne, and proceeds through Rampton and Broadmoor. Many incidents recounted in its pages are verifiable elsewhere, such as a 2006 letter he had published in the radical newspaper Class War, and a website he briefly created from behind bars in 2005. The book, which he compares to prison classics such as The Shawshank Redemption and Papillon, details frightening delusions – chiefly that the kidnap involved only a fake Princess Anne, no working bullets, and no injury. The plan, he claims, was just to generate publicity so he could write a 'best-selling' autobiography about his 'prank'. The mysterious 'Frank', whom he claims knew all about the 'hoax', has always been the key, elusive figure. Ball claims in the book that he has 'extra sensory powers', psychic abilities to reverse his age and that of the beautiful women he 'makes love' to. He can also, he writes, become immortal, teleport himself and cure all the world's illnesses. For decades he has described himself as a 'very dangerous working-class dissenter' wrongly incarcerated as a 'political prisoner' because Britain's 'upper-class dictatorship' fears his 'dissenting philosophies'. He claims his letters to various prime ministers, sent from Broadmoor, 'have resulted in the total transformation of society', from Tony Blair's mantra of 'education, education, education', to the creation of the Crown Prosecution Service and the minimum wage. The late Queen is a focus, too – with Ball suspecting she was 'hoodwinked by Frank's associates' and was the 'ring leader' behind his incarceration. If she refused to sign a document confirming his psychic powers, he threatened to 'inflame public opinion and make sure she was sentenced to spend the rest of her natural life in prison'. The book's afterword is clear: 'Are you a budding Hercule Poirot? You can earn £1,000.' He explains he is seeking to prove the 'hoax' kidnap actually took place on March 20, 1975, not 1974, and would pay for evidence. 'It's a knotty problem' he writes, warning 'Frank' could 'nobble' foreign newspaper publishers to mock up fake, re-dated papers to obscure the truth. Those who can help are told to write to a PO Box near his hostel. Approached last week, Ball tried to row back on the most extreme claims, insisting that some parts of the book were fiction. He said he did not believe he had psychic powers, the key to immortality, or to have effected 'the total transformation of society'. 'That's just rubbish,' he told me. Ball claims even now, unconvincingly, that he belatedly accepts the kidnap 'hoax' happened, but says he is innocent because he thought the bullets would not fire and 'Anne' was an imposter, something he still suspects. He told me by text, too, that he remains a 'very dangerous working-class dissenter'. His endless quest continues for the elusive 'Frank' and apparent evidence in the Middlesex Advertiser of their 'pranks' together. Hence the leaflets he recruits strangers to deliver and monthly visits to a point by a London Tube station to meet anyone with evidence. None have shown up yet. Hence, too, his Facebook and X accounts, and online appeals to find someone who recalls the days when he was a prankster known as 'The Local Wag' and can confirm the existence of Frank. Do the Broadmoor doctors whom he says monitor him know of his campaign? Ball said: 'I have to tell them everything about it.' He said Princess Anne was 'presumably' informed of his release, but he had 'no reason' to contact her. And his campaign continues. Will he ever give up trying to prove he was an 'innocent, sane man'?
