"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.

Summer Fete Leaflet (1976)

As can be seen from this leaflet advertising a local fete, acts of terror and violent incidents were so frequent in 1970s Scarfolk that many people came to expect them and planned their days around them. Employers and local councils built them into their calendars and children spent more than half their school time memorising and rehearsing emergency drills. Violence was endured like bad weather, inconvenient yet seemingly unavoidable.

Eventually, however, terrorists and murderous loners found it too demanding to keep up with the schedules expected by others and, disheartened by the public's apathetic reaction to their actions, stubbornly refused to commit any more atrocities until they once again inspired the fear they felt they deserved. 

Drug Advertisements (1970)

When Scarfolk's Mayor Ritter announced his determination to fight the war on drugs, he meant it. He also knew that if you want to win a war, it has to exist in the first place. Fortunately, Ritter had shares in the Cavalier Pharmaceutical company with whom the council secretly collaborated on a scheme to introduce vast amounts of highly-addictive narcotics into the daily lives of Scarfolk children.

The scheme not only bolstered Cavalier Pharm and other local industries; by the end of the decade it had also attracted increased government funding for the region's police and prison services. Additionally, as many young addicts didn't make it to adulthood, the strain on the NHS and welfare programmes was greatly reduced.

When Ritter was lauded for his services to the town, he said he had only done it for the children who, he declared, "are the future", though it became apparent that he specifically meant his own children who had been conceived during occult rituals, had never been exposed to the drug schemes and now had many more career opportunities than they might have had otherwise.

Above and below are 1970 drug advertisements by Cavalier Pharm. By 1972 barbiturates had been introduced to school milk, and drugs such as heroin were included in the ingredients of Pick 'n' Mix sweet selections.

More Cavalier Pharm related posts: Mindborstal and Children & Hallucinogens: The Future of Discipline.  See also: Lobottymed (Discovering Scarfolk. p.15) and Placebol (Discovering Scarfolk. p.66).

Xenophobic Postcards

 

In 1972 the University of Scarfolk trialled a new drug that affects the part of the brain that produces racist attitudes.

Researchers observed that the subjects lost control of their bodily functions and had to wear clinical incontinence products. Additionally, many subjects found it difficult to form coherent thoughts, much less verbalise them, and their mental ages registered as those of infants.

The experiment was discontinued, not on ethical grounds, but because the researchers concluded that there were no discernible behavioural and psychological differences between the racists who had taken the drug, and the control group of racists that hadn't.

When the Foreign Secretary read the study's findings, he decided that xenophobia should be extolled as one of Britain's defining virtues and he immediately set out to promote this idea abroad.

Recruitment Advertisement (1970s)