Skip to main content
Armistice Day: myth and reality
TONY COLLINS reveals the true story of the end of WWI – a story of rebellions, mutinies and strikes by soldiers and others determined to end the horrific slaughter, a story buried under official rituals and ceremonies
UPRISING: German sailors demonstrating at the port town of Wilhelmshaven, November 10 1918

ARMISTICE DAY is promoted as a celebration of national unity, “the day the guns fell silent,” and when the wounds of first world war began to heal.

But the reality is that November 11 1918 marked the start of a new phase of war: the escalation of the class war.

The night before the German high command formally surrendered, Britain’s war cabinet met in Downing Street. The minutes of that meeting reveal that the armistice was not the government’s most important issue.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Berlin
Books / 5 June 2026
5 June 2026

WILL PODMORE admires an account of the liberation of Berlin that overthrows the conventional US army-inspired account

Tom Mooney Company from the Lincoln Battalion, during the Spanish Civil War, Jarama, Spain, 1937
History / 24 February 2026
24 February 2026

CJ ATKINS commemorates one of the most dramatic moments in working-class history

Jeremy Corbyn (second left) and Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South (second right) on the picket line outside London Euston train station, August 18, 2022
Features / 20 August 2025
20 August 2025

Corbyn and Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ represents the first attempt at mass socialist organisation since the CPGB’s formation in 1921, argues DYLAN MURPHY

TENDENTIOUS: Illustration of the Cardiff riots from the Illustrated Police News, June 19 1919 - note the depiction of the black man as a knife-wielding assailant / Pic: Public domain
Racism / 15 August 2025
15 August 2025

White racist rioting has many an infamous precedent in Britain, writes DAVID HORSLEY