The armistice was not the result of a victory, or a noble sacrifice. It marked the moment at which the workers of the world refused to continue to slaughter and be slaughtered for the ruling class.

The Kiel Mutiny, The Russian Revolution, The Easter Rising, Red Clydeside, The Turin Insurrection and a thousand mutinies, revolutions and assassinations made it impossible for the capitalists and imperialists to continue the bloodletting.

We need to reclaim the history of the end of the First World War. In the British Cabinet the armistice was agreed on because as Lloyd George put it “Bolshevism is a greater danger than the Bosche.”

The only way to honour the dead is to stop spreading the lies of the politicians who killed them. The same lies that the same liberals, capitalists, arms traders and financiers use to continue today’s wars.

It was the workers of the world who stood up again and again from 1914-1918 and finally stopped the war. Communist, Pacifists, anti-imperialists, Indian freedom fighters, Quakers and others who refused to kill and be killed for profit.

As John Maclean said in 1914: ‘it is our business as Socialists to develop a “class patriotism,” refusing to murder one another for a sordid world capitalism.’

That “class patriotism” is what Maclean, Connolly, Luxemburg, Gramsci and others were a part of. Their communism saved millions of lives and ended the war. It’d be more appropriate to wear a red star than a red poppy today.

An article in The Scotsman yesterday carried the headline ‘Joy of Peace Soon Gave way to Red Clydeside Anger.’ This is a dangerous lie. It was the anger of Clydeside, Hamburg, Petrograd, and Turin that gave us peace.

So, on remembrance Sunday please remember the tens of thousands of revolutionaries and mutineers who died so that we could have peace. And don’t buy into imperialist lies.

The photos above are of workers and soldiers organised against the ruling class in 1918 and 1919 in Berlin, Glasgow, Petrograd and Hamburg.