When I was an office boy at the Glasgow Herald I was sent to the Mitchell Library to find out what the paper said about historic events during its 200 year history. One of the things that struck me was how before the First World War the paper took a paternalistic attitude to the poor and disadvantaged. After 1917 the poor and working class were the enemy. At the time I put this down as a reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. But recently I've become aware that this attitude probably had its roots in events in the years leading up to The War. I hadn't realised what a basket case Britain was then. The upper-class sufferagette movement was mounting a terrorist campaign to get votes for women that only by a series of miracles did not result in loss of victims' lives. The British officer corps, a major employer of Irish protestants, was threatening mutiny if sent in to enforce Irish Home Rule. The years leading up to the war also saw British troops on British streets, particularly in 1913 in London, Sheffield and Liverpool, to help quell labour and working class unrest. There's a photo of the Gordon Highlanders marching into Sheffield in khaki jackets, kilts, and their ceremonial feather bonnets. In much the same way as the so-called Battle of George Square in 1919 Glasgow was never properly taught in school history, neither were the times the British Army were deployed on British streets in the years leading up to the outbreak of World War One in 1914. I wonder why.