YOUR editorial (LET, June 16) asking how English soccer hooligans got to France in the first place was dead right.

Whatever the Home Secretary may say, this awful spectacle was not "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime," but more the opposite.

I would expect this question of how to deal with these twisted monsters to be resolved by Jack Straw in having the police arrest them immediately they come back to this country.

Otherwise, the same scenario that faced the Conservative government of saying one thing and doing another will be just too awful to contemplate.

One question that should also be asked is where did the funds come from to allow them passage and accommodation over there? In this case politics be damned - it should be the law that should be exercised with vigour and determination to get rid of these dysfunctional elements who feel it is clever to drag the good name of England into the mud.

If Scotland can eradicate this mindless violence from its society as it appears to have done in football, then there is no excuse for the politicians, the judiciary or the Football Association to sit idly by and mouth platitudes.

In my opinion, any fan who either perpetrated or joined in the scenes that have caused shame to this country and its football pride and traditions should be banned for life from any ground, domestic or international, and if caught flagrantly defying an exclusion order should be jailed.

DUNCAN McVEE, Robin Bank Road, Darwen.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.