The reality of this lawless age

To a generation brought up in immediate post-war Bexhill, arson was something seen only on the silver screen. It was the subject of films, of fiction; the sort of vicious, anti-social behaviour which had no existence in reality.

Stacks of new wheelie bins do not spontaneously combust in the night. They are ignited by people who not only have no regard for property but no concern for human life.

Sunday's massive blaze may have been in Wainwright Road car park but it was not far removed from the homes of people living in Reginald Road. It was certainly not far enough removed from the 9th Bexhill Scout Group's headquarters to save the building from total destruction.

So, in the centenary year of an institution devoted to helping young people grow into useful, community-spirited adulthood, a few mindless idiots beyond the reach of such good work can wipe out not only the Scouts' headquarters but irreplaceable photographs, equipment and memorabilia amassed over the past 100 years.

Even if this pointless, wasteful and potentially dangerous night's crime had been committed in isolation it would be deeply worrying. But it wasn't done in isolation. It forms part of a pattern which is becoming far too familiar.

Recent examples of the arsonists' handiwork have included the Grand Hotel, the former Charters Ancaster College buildings in Penland Road, the De La Warr Parade flats block, TVC's original Devonshire Road premises and the pet food shop in Sackville Road.

A burnt-out Skoda has stood in Manor Gardens this week. Nearby, the car park is still scarred by a previous car fire.

The list seems endless.

And that is not including the supreme example, the 1987 Northeye Riot where in a night of sheer lunacy Bexhill prisoners set light to the buildings that housed them and caused 4.2m worth of damage.

Converting an RAF station was a hasty, ill-conceived attempt to help solve the prisons overcrowding of the mid-Sixties. As a society, we have learned nothing.

Our prisons are still hopelessly overcrowded - to the extent that guilty people are either being released after sentences slashed to absurdity or never given the punishment they deserve in the first place.

There HAS to be a deterrent that makes criminals think twice. If the cost of that is building more prisons then that is the price of acknowledging the reality of a lawless age.