The Infamous Class 3 School Illustration (1976-1979)

On 10 September, 1976, dozens of children, including every single pupil from class 3, Scarfolk High School, vanished on their way to school. A police operation was launched but no clues were ever found. The children were pronounced dead the following Monday, a mere three days later.

Every year thereafter, the police commissioned their sketch artist to draw, in the style of a school photograph, how the missing children might have looked (albeit with their faces removed) had they not disappeared in mysterious circumstances. This was sent to the bereaved parents of class 3 at an exorbitant cost of £31.25.

In the 1979 class sketch, one parent noticed a small label on one of the faceless figure's clothes that contained a code word only their child could have known. 

Under mounting pressure from parents, the police eventually raided their artist's studio and found 347 children in his cellar where many had been held captive for several years. The police immediately seized and confined the children as evidence in a crime investigation, which, after much dithering, ultimately never went to court leaving the families no choice but to pursue a private prosecution against the kidnapper. 

As the children had already been pronounced dead and the cost of amending the relevant paperwork was high, they were given away as prizes in the Scarfolk police raffle, which helped pay the legal fees of their sketch artist, who, it turns out, was the son of Scarfolk's police commissioner.

Social-Distancing Laws (1970)

The 'Fingers On Lips' Campaign (1978)

Crime in Scarfolk did not rise substantially between 1976 and 1977, largely due to the latest in thought detection techniques* and random public executions. The government, however, did announce that there had been a significant increase in naughtiness.

Many citizens criticised the state for treating them like children. The council denied this but in January 1979, thousands received orders to put 'fingers on lips' while in public. Scarfolk fell silent.

Specially trained police officers patrolled streets, public and private buildings, and handed out on-the-spot fines for various misdemeanours such as not standing up straight, running in corridors and not paying attention. At the officer's discretion, the fines could be substituted for corporal punishment with a slipper, belt, cane or rabid Alsatian.

By the summer of 1979, the scheme was in chaos: So many people had been sent to 'stand in the corner' that a new, much larger corner had to be built - at a cost of £2 million - to accommodate the cramped detainees. In August alone, 94 people died after they raised their hands to go to the toilet but were not given permission. They had simply been forgotten.

At the end of the decade, the council decided that because of a small handful of troublemakers, the whole town would have to be punished: Everyone would have to resit the 1970s.

* See thought-detector vans and thought policy leaflets.

Illegal Public Displays of Emotion (1970s Public Information)

In Scarfolk, public displays of emotion were governed by draconian laws. Negative or even ambiguous feelings (such as curiosity and hesitation) were deemed seditious and on-the-spot fines and punishments were often meted out by police (and by the Council Christmas Boy during the season of good will).

Distress (see poster above), a broad term which included "psychological breakdown", "suffering personal injury or attack" and "tutting in a queue at the post office", was considered to be a criticism of the state and therefore treasonous.

The only emotional expression truly free of censure was, according to government guidelines, "an abiding, unmistakable demonstration of pride in Our Joyous State (even if that demonstration requires the forfeiture of one's pride - and/or physical body - for the sake of Our Joyous State)". By 1979, feelings such as scepticism and doubt had been declared acts of terrorism.

These laws permitted police to cast a wide net in their investigations and arrests. Even if citizens did manage to pass the stringent, invasive contentment examinations they were still eligible for arrest if their pets exhibited negative emotions. Records show that many people were detained because of their sulky dogs and there was even one case of an arrest due to a livid tortoise.

See also The Anti-Weeping Campaign, which was aimed at children.

Police Interrogation Safewords

Almost everybody endured police interrogations at some point during the 1970s. They were so frequent that most families had a packed bag by the front door (people were expected to bring a spare change of underwear and their own first-aid supplies).

If by chance all members of a family were summoned together, they might make a day of it, have a picnic in the prison facility's Garden of Incorruptibility and watch the interrogation of their loved ones on big monitors. Laugh tracks were included to minimise distress.

While the security services were openly proud of their slogans such as "we promise to raise a glass to those who don't confess", if a detainee did suffer irreversible psychological or physical damage as a result of their interrogation, the family was awarded a £5 book token and a potted cactus as compensation.

More about Scarfolk Security Services.

"Children: The Cause of All Crime"

In 1970 the Scarfolk Crime Commission embarked on the largest study into crime to date. After two years of intense investigation it found a startling correlation between the types of people who commit crime and their early life experiences.

The findings were unequivocal: 100% of criminals had also once been children.

The council immediately put into effect acts intended to reduce, if not entirely eradicate this insidious cause of crime. Thousands of children were rounded up in camps. Toys were burnt in massive pyres. Adults were sterilised. Anyone who had been in regular contact with children, or had ever been a child, was quarantined in vast bunkers specially built several storeys below the council building.

Though Scarfolk was reduced to a ghost town, the scheme proved a success. During the first month that these stringent measures had been implemented not one crime had been committed. Consequently, at the 1972 Conference of Sham Utopias, a local conservative MP predicted that the most successful towns, and even countries, of the future will be those that eradicate all citizens who have any connection to, or dealings with, children or the adults they grow into.

For more about bad children, see: Brood parasites, Serious Infant Dental Assault, the Never Go with Strange Children campaign and the Infant Liberation Front terror group.

"Life is Easier With Guilt" Public Information Campaign

This is part 2 of our look at crime in Scarfolk (see last week’s post about 'Real British Crime').

In 1972, Scarfolk Council decided that the "presumption of innocence before being proven guilty" was a bit too presumptuous.

A council spokesperson said that "such legal bureaucracy completely ignores the rights of guilty people who want to be legally recognised as guilty but have either committed a crime that has unfortunately gone undetected, or are, through no fault of their own, awaiting trials which could take many months, even years to rightfully establish their guilt.

The spokesman also pointed out that people may be guilty of actions that are not yet considered crimes and underlined the importance of recognising these people’s culpability to ensure peace of mind.

In the spring of 1973, the government's propaganda department launched a campaign that promoted guilt as a desirable attribute. It was so successful that many people feared they might not be guilty enough and committed horrific crimes to nurture in themselves feelings of self-worth and wellbeing.

The campaign featured a policeman whose nickname was "PC Fang". Allegedly, he had the ability to instil a deep sense of guilt in even the most innocent citizens. Some say he achieved this by using supernatural powers; others say he used a hammer.

 

A frame from a lost public information film that played at cinemas during the advertisements. 

A T-shirt compulsorily worn by children.

The Campaign for Real British Crime (CRBC)

When immigrants began moving to Scarfolk in the mid-1970s, many local criminals worried that foreign offenders would threaten their livelihoods. They formed an organisation called the Campaign for Real British Crime (CRBC), which fought for the rights of UK born criminals. The CRBC demanded that the police prioritise investigations in favour of offences committed by British lawbreakers, for whom they also tried to ensure more convictions and longer prison terms.

Campaigners for Real British Crime also attempted to reintroduce and encourage traditional, archaic crimes, some of which had not been committed in Britain for many years; for example, conspiring with a neighbour's goose while intoxicated, handling rhubarb and voles in suspicious circumstances, invoking demons while wearing a toupee, and committing crimes abroad when they can be carried out just as successfully at home.

"Positive Outlook? Look Out!" (1976)

In the hot summer of 1976, people were enjoying the rare sunshine and the opportunity to socialise, sometimes even with foreigners. Scarfolk Council became concerned that its citizens were developing something akin to happiness, which it considered a destabilising threat to its authority.

Government operatives illicitly carried out false-flag acts of terror in an attempt to discourage positivity and regain control, but Scarfolk citizens were undeterred.

Fearing that this pandemic of cheerfulness was a prelude to social breakdown, perhaps even leading to revolution, the government quickly passed a health bill to formally recategorise "psychological states such as contentment, gratification and satisfaction" as mental illnesses "as dangerous in their effects as diseases such as rabies".

The above poster, which played on deep-seated personal doubts, appeared on the walls of cafes and restaurants, leisure centres and in other locations where people might be at risk of enjoying themselves or becoming contaminated by peace-of-mind

"Mr Liver Head" Toy (mid-1970s)

As part of its scheme to recycle human body parts (first outlined in "An End to Starvation?", Pelican Books, 1973), Scarfolk Council insisted that the region's NHS hospitals and police departments bolster their dwindling funds by partnering with commercial businesses. One such enforced collaboration was between Scarfolk Barber Surgeons Clinic, Greater Scarfolk Police and the ScarToys Company.

Surgical waste, such as amputated limbs, damaged internal organs and even excised tumours, was pooled with body parts accumulated by criminal forensics teams from the scenes of violent crimes. These were delivered in large trucks to ScarToys, whose development departments repurposed them into children's playthings with names like Snakes & Bladders, Fun Lung, My Little Kidney, Haunted Heart and the Placenta Playcentre. There were even crayons made from rendered human fat as well as authentic editions of the Operation Game and Girl's World.

But by far the most popular toy was Mr Liver Head, which was based on Mr Potato Head (see above and below). It quickly became so popular that a military curfew had to be imposed on overzealous young fans who would go to any lengths to acquire fresher, more impressive body parts to become the envy of their friends.

More posts about Scarfolk toys: "Pollute", "Mr Smug", "Land Mine", "Surgical Toy Insertions", "Lung Puppy", "Deformed Anonymous Infant Demon", "Ethnic Cleansing Playset", "Vulnerable Sam", "Junior Will & Testament".

"People Are Dangerous" (1974-1975)

During the People Purges of 1974 and 1975, the many people who peopled Scarfolk were alarmed to learn that they were now the kinds of people that the government categorised as "people".

With no clear definition of what the state meant by "people", the mayor, who had previously declared himself a man of the people, tried to alleviate anxiety among his people by saying he didn't want to drive a wedge between people; he only intended to arrest those kinds of people who he deemed not to be "people people".

He said that he of all people knew that the most effective way to crack down on these people was with "people power": People working together to observe people, being able to tell people apart and then reporting those people to the appropriate people in authority.

On the 13 August 1975, the only people not in prison were six government officials, members of Scarfolk police force and a man called Dennis Peoples who suffered from a rare psychiatric syndrome called Clinical Lycanthropy which led him to believe he was a puffer fish.

DIY Childcare Books

DIY was all the rage in the 1970s, but in Scarfolk it wasn't just limited to household repairs and interior decoration. Childless, sterilised adults, many of whom had been specially bred for civic or sacrificial service, decided that unauthorised parenting might prove to be a nice hobby or weekend pastime.

When children began mysteriously disappearing in their dozens, police detective Evan Brown of Scarfolk constabulary dedicated himself to rigorously investigating the cases. He swiftly came to the conclusion that there was a gap in the market for self-help and DIY parenting books for child abductors. Brown quit his job and penned several books on the subject (see above and below). He was also responsible for a change in law that required abductors to compensate parents for the loss of their children with hampers containing fruit, chutneys and a selection regional cheeses.

click to enlarge

Forensic Litter Collection (1978)

The police budget for 1978 was only half of what it had been the previous year. This was because the treasury had been robbed and the subsequent investigation was thwarted by limited resources. The thieves were never apprehended.

Violent crime soared, particularly recreational parricide, and Scarfolk's woodlands, wastelands and canals were strewn with bodies and body parts. The police, overwhelmed by the sheer number of cases and keen to deflect any criticism, claimed that the problem was not one of unsolved homicide but of littering and blamed any failings on the Keep Britain Tidy campaign.

The two eventually agreed to pool resources and turned the task of forensic crime scene examination over to the community, children in particular. Much like the children's TV programme Blue Peter, schools launched charity appeals that encouraged pupils to collect victim debris, organic or otherwise, to raise money (see leaflet above). In 1978 children across the country collected nearly £9000 worth of gold fillings and 525 glass eyes, among other items. Some were cleaned and reconditioned for further use.

Homicide litter recycling became so popular in the late-70s that some overly-enthusiastic people tried to donate whole family members before they had passed away, but the rules were quite strict: donations could only be accepted if the person was murdered first. To this end, the police helpfully released a pamphlet describing those methods which were most likely to avoid detection.

Brood Parasites (1970)

In 1970 there was a spate of cases involving brood parasites. Unknown children began appearing in households all over Scarfolk. So inconspicuous were these children that months would go by before a host family noticed a strange child in their midst, sitting at their dinner tables, taking over the bedrooms and toys of the youngest legitimate family members. Social workers reported that it was as if each host family had been "hypnotised" into believing the child was theirs.

It was also discovered that these children had been regularly stealing small, family possessions which they then sealed in wax and hair and buried in scrubland beneath a motorway flyover. When unmarked Scarfolk council vans were found collecting the wax-sealed objects, an enquiry was launched. The council rejected the accusation that the brood parasite offspring were part of a secret government deal with "an insistent non-human organisation", and they were pressured to tackle the problem, hence the poster campaign above.

Local corporations generously funded a community aid scheme, whose slogan was "The future of our real children is at stake". Scarfolk Tobacco Company recommended literally smoking out the preternatural children and sent thousands of complimentary packs of cigarettes to infant schools, while Scarf Distilleries Ltd. promoted the regular application of neat alcohol to any suspect minors.

It is now believed that there were very few officially accepted brood parasites and the vast majority of arrests turned out to be normal children rejected by their disappointed parents because of low exchange evaluations.

I-Spy Surveillance Books

In the years before digital surveillance and the government's Snooper's Charter, it was much harder for the state to spy on its citizens.

Without the technology we have today, the government had to rely on manpower, specifically from society's most innocent members - minors. Children in the UK especially were much easier to manipulate and were largely oblivious to the creeping diminishment of their civil liberties.

I-Spy books were published by the state and given as gifts, as well as distributed to schools, youth clubs and infant terror organisations (see "The Infant Liberation Front"). The books transformed the tedium of surveillance into play, encouraging children to routinely observe and record the actions, speech and private correspondence of people who the government deemed to be enemies of society. These included "free-thinkers, beneficiaries of welfare and other degenerates. [...] Extremists, potential extremists, and those whose profound lack of extremist attributes is extreme in itself, are also worthy of suspicion and censure."

The completed books even prompted children to spy on themselves, which many found difficult, even with the mirrors provided.

Each completed book was sent to a local government councillor whose job it was to forward the data to the relevant renditions team, and also to decide if any compensation was due to the child; for example, if the surveillance data they had submitted led to the arrest and execution of a parent.

More about surveillance in Scarfolk here:
"Unlearn Privacy Cards"
"We Watch You While You Sleep. TV Signal Intrusion"
"Roy, The Telekinetic Child-Owl"

Remembrance Poppies Leaflet (1977)

In 1977 a war briefly broke out in Scarfolk over how peacetime should be administrated. The government favoured aggressively pursuing corporate and economic interests in overseas territories. This was executed by the newly-founded Department of Foreign Business Acquisitions (FBA), another name for what was also known as the armed forces. By chance, international conflicts often broke out shortly before the FBA's scheduled arrival in troubled regions, and it was both fortunate and convenient that the FBA were on hand to liberate lucrative businesses, particularly those pertaining to natural resources, from enemy control.

Others in Scarfolk favoured the strict regimentation of peace on home turf. The council published a lengthy list of civic misdeeds which were regarded as "incompatible with war and/or peace". While the list included obvious restrictions such as "engaging in illegal conflict without paying appropriate war-spoils tax to the government", it also included lesser misdemeanours such as not wearing remembrance poppies. The red flower, a symbol of fought-for freedoms which are "to be exercised in precisely the manner stipulated by the state", was worn as a sign of respect to the honourable men and women who lost their lives in wars, honourable or otherwise.

"Thought Policy" Leaflet (1976)

Below is a leaflet published by the Scarfolk council department that was set up in 1973 to deal with citizen thought detection and control.

In addition to the thought-detector vans which prowled Scarfolk's streets (see HERE for more information), citizens were expected to undergo regular thought inspections.

At the time, thought terrorism was rife and most major public buildings and spaces had security checkpoints. Citizens were expected to read, understand and answer the questions put to them in the leaflet before being scanned by an IDS (Idea Detection Scanner). Initially, IDSs were just ex-policemen who had failed psychiatric empathy tests after sustaining severe head injuries. The practice of using such policemen was stopped when it was discovered that the method they used to extract thoughts from citizens' heads involved the use of a big, sharp stick and an ice-cream scoop. More accurate IDS machines eventually replaced the policemen, drastically reducing human error, though the stick and ice-cream scoop were retained.

Roy, The Telekinetic Child-Owl (1973-1979)

Scarfolk Council was no stranger to invading the privacy of ordinary families. Back in December we introduced you to the council Christmas Boy (see HERE) who strictly monitored the contentment of families during the festive season. We've since received letters asking how the council kept households in check during the rest of the year.

In 1973 the council engineered a genetically modified creature called Roy. He was the result of cross-breeding barn owls with surplus human infants raised by prying, judgemental, lower-middle-class parents. Roy was cloned and delivered to every family in Scarfolk. His job was to oversee domestic affairs, and, if any family member deviated from officially sanctioned activity, Roy was to berate them by tutting and shaking his head.

Unfortunately, there had been a clinical oversight. Volatile poltergeist DNA had accidentally contaminated Roy's genes when a careless scientist left open a lab window which looked out onto a supernatural-energy processing plant. Instead of the envisioned tutting and head-shaking, Roy flew into violent rages, triggering major telekinetic events. There were reports of Roys decimating entire families and, in one case, allegedly annihilating an entire housing estate.

The council was under pressure to recall the defective owls, but because there had been a sudden drop in the numbers of families claiming benefits, it announced instead that Roy was a resounding success and millions more of the human-owl hybrid were commissioned by the police and social services.

"Where's your child?" Public Information (1974)

Scarfolk's Junior Detonation Task Force was noted for its over-enthusiasm in regard to unattended children. It was known to test a parent's attention by luring them away from their child, beyond the legal 4 metre supervision zone, with the offer of weekend caravanning holidays, expensive kitchenware and ice-creams.

The sound of controlled explosions became commonplace in airports, bus stations, libraries, supermarkets and public playgrounds.

However, parents could not be held responsible when their children were at school or any other of the town's many infant indoctrination covens. Scarfolk education authority, keen to avoid staff culpability, redefined concepts of supervision and attendance by making the child responsible for its own proximity to its teacher.

For example, the education board decreed that a member of staff could not be held accountable if a child daydreamed. Apart from the fact that daydreaming was technically deemed to be truancy, it took a child well beyond the supervision zone, psychologically speaking, and staff could not be expected to go into a trance every time a child needed to be retrieved from its reverie. This form of mental agility was particularly taxing for gym teachers. Yet children found it hard not to daydream, largely due to the plethora of medication they were expected to imbibe daily.

Children all over Scarfolk eventually became disgruntled about the frequent detonations which continually disrupted classes, and they trained a group of pre-school mediums to wander the psychic plane alerting absent-minded children before they were spotted by the Junior Detonation Task Force.

"Pious Peril" public information (1972)

When the stationery-worshipping cult of Officism became the dominant faith in 1970s Scarfolk (see Discovering Scarfolk for more details) all other religions were forced underground.

Consequently, outcast religious zealots would loiter outside schools and target vulnerable children. The devout deviants would try to entice youngsters into their cars with colourful, desirable books about eschatological and soteriological theology. Sometimes they would expose their tabernacles.

However, children weren't such easy prey. Officist schools taught their pupils rudimentary anti-religion logic, such as the well-known observation by Epicurus:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? 
Then he may have accidentally locked himself in the garage.
Is he able, but not willing? 
Then he may still be upset with you for eating that ham salad sandwich last April. 
Is he both able and willing? 
Then he may just be delayed for some reason, e.g., stuck in traffic.
Is he neither able nor willing? 
Then he may have lost his job due to an industrial accident, such as getting his beard caught in a factory machine. Or he might be striking over having to work 6 days a week without benefits.

Some children did inadvisedly go with these pious perverts, but only because they wanted to practice what they had learned in their kidney removal classes.