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.

Memory Chemicals (1979)

Just as Scarfolk Council demanded control over cultural memories and the historical narrative taught in schools, it also wanted to control individuals' memories.

To ensure a docile, compliant populace, Scarfolk promoted the idea of clumsy townsfolk forever stumbling into situations and seeing and hearing things they shouldn't, and proposed that measures be taken so that citizens only retained information that reflected the official party line at any given time.

Building on the success of the Black Spot Card campaign, potent, neurotoxic chemicals (and, in some cases, a steel truncheon) were employed, according to one leaflet, to: "cleanse unnecessary or redundant memories, so as to unclutter the mind".

The campaign and treatments were so effective that some people became inexplicably afraid not only to go outside but also to go into rooms in their own homes in case they saw or overheard something forbidden.

Those who could still manage to venture into rooms immediately forgot why they were there and, following a deluge of confused calls to the authorities, they had to be reminded that they had forgotten, and should now forget that they had remembered that they had forgotten.

National Security Ear Grafts (1975)

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When compulsory surveillance ear grafts were introduced in 1975, many Scarfolk citizens resorted to non-verbal forms of interpersonal communication to avoid the attention of government eavesdroppers. This in turn prompted a ban and users of sign language, mime artists and even fans of the party game charades suddenly found themselves on the wrong side the law. Writing was also subject to restrictions and was only permitted when verbal delivery was not possible. Incensed by the ban, a fervent group of mimes known as the MLA (Mime Liberation Army) committed several acts of silent terror and built invisible walls around government buildings preventing staff from entering.

The authorities recognised that national security ears were perhaps not as feasible as they had originally thought. Although several other surveillance schemes were launched in Scarfolk in the 1970s (see, for example, thought-detector vans, telekinetic child-owls, I-Spy books and Living-Eye surveillance computers), GCHQ realised that the most productive way to surveil a nation is for the citizens to unwittingly collate all their own personal data, verbal or otherwise, and transmit it directly to the government. In essence, citizens spying on and betraying themselves. Unfortunately, this idea would be not become workable on an industrial scale until the age of the internet.

Welfare Recipient Targets (1971-1979)

In 1971 it became compulsory for welfare recipients to sew targets onto their clothing so that they could be identified in public at all times. The minister for social services rejected claims that the target invited personal attacks, sidestepping the fact that the government had concurrently increased its funding of archery classes for newly released criminal sociopaths as part of their reintegration into society.

Despite these developments, the number of people claiming welfare tripled by 1973, in part because many families had lost one or more breadwinners to arrow-related injuries. The government, desperate to reduce spending, began promoting the idea that less dependent members of society involved in "crimes against target wearers" should be exempted from legal proceedings. In fact, they were rewarded. For example, points on drunk drivers’ licenses were removed following accidents which produced fatalities within the boundaries of large council estates.

There were also several instances of fully-armed Alvis FV101 Scorpion tanks, with the keys in their ignitions, inexplicably left by the army on the driveways of decent, middle-class citizens who neighboured built-up social housing areas.