Man jailed for 15 months over 'vile' Southport riot social media post

An engineer who posted on social media about burning asylum hotels to the ground during last summer's Southport riots has been jailed for 15 months - a week after a prosecution bungle saw him released from custody. Joseph Haythorne urged for hotels to burn "with those scruffy b-------in it" in a post penned just as violence erupted outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Rotherham.

Haythorne, 26, posted the comment on X, formerly Twitter, at lunchtime on Aug 4, 2024, just as an anti-immigration demonstration outside the Holiday Inn Express, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, began to descend into rioting. More than 60 police officers were injured in the violence that afternoon as hundreds of people bombarded police and the hotel with missiles. At one point, rioters set fire to a bin against a fire door of the hotel, which had 240 asylum seekers inside as well as more than 20 staff, and some broke into the building.

Sheffield Crown Court heard that Haythorne's post from an anonymised account, which was viewed by 1,100 people in 17 minutes before he deleted it, included a link to a now-deleted post by activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson.

The defendant's full post read: "Go on Rotherham. Burn any hotels with them scruffy b******s in it."

Prosecutors said the case had some similarities with the case of Lucy Connolly, who was jailed last year for 31 months after she posted on X: "Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care... if that makes me racist so be it."

Bianca Brasoveanu, defending Haythorne, said he "made a wrongful connection between the Southport events and immigration in general" after reading a "poisonous" post online.

She told the court the case was different to that of Connolly, whose post was live for hours and an investigation into her social media "revealed other posts including further racist remarks".

"None of this was present within Mr Haythorne's social media. The defendant is more interested in football than anything else," Ms Brasoveanu said.

She said Haythorne, who is from Ashford in Surrey, had "displayed a very different way of behaviour" by deleting the post after 17 minutes and handing himself in at a police station.

The barrister said the defendant has problems around depression which would make him vulnerable in prison as his symptoms could worsen.

But Judge Jeremy Richardson KC locked him up after branding the defendant's post "vile".

The judge said Haythorne had been distressed by comments online about the "dreadful events in Southport", adding that there had been "an awful lot of malicious and malignant nonsense on the internet".

He reduced the sentence after considering the defendant's clinical depression, his guilty plea at the earliest opportunity and personal mitigation.

But Judge Richardson said he was sure that immediate custody was necessary due to the seriousness of the offence and he jailed Haythorne for 15 months.

He 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."

Earlier on Wednesday, before adjourning to consider his sentence, the judge said Haythorne "took leave of his senses" after being "inflamed by malignant comments on social media" and made the post "just as the incident at Rotherham was taking off in a very unpleasant fashion".

He read the defendant's post about burning hotels and told him: "Within one and a half to two hours, that is exactly what happened."

Last week prosecutors were left red-faced after Sheffield Crown Court was told that the offence Haythorne was charged with - publishing material intended to stir up racial hatred - required permission from the Attorney General before charges can be brought, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had not received permission in his case because of an "oversight".

The Recorder of Sheffield, Judge Jeremy Richardson, said any court proceedings up to now were "a nullity" and quashed Haythorne's conviction.

The engineer, who had been remanded in custody ahead of his sentencing, was released from prison.

His case was sent back to magistrates' court, where he pleaded guilty to the charge for a second time resulting in his appearance before the Crown Court.