AS BRITAIN was engulfed in World War I commemorations yesterday peace activists held their very own event highlighting the horrors of war and demanding an end to the glorification of bloodshed.

The No Glory in War campaign held an evening rally in Parliament Square to mark the 100th anniversary of the start of a conflict which killed over 20 million people.

Actors Samuel West and Kika Markham performed at the event, followed by a reading of Keir Hardie’s 1914 anti-war speech by Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn.

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament general secretary Kate Hudson told the rally: “I would like to recognise those resisters across all nationalities and across all faiths and none, the pacifists, the communists, the men, the women, the young and the old who stood against the tide of war.

“Their courage will live forever in the hearts of those who fight for peace.

“They lit that flame and we carry it forward today.

“It’s hard to imagine the hostility and jingoism those brave people faced as they opposed that savage and bestial war in which millions of people were to die.”

Al Kennedy took the stage to read Carol Ann Duffy’s poem Last Post in honour of the last trenches veteran Harry Patch

Up to his death in 2009, Mr Patch was well known for condemning the war as “legalised mass murder.”

No Glory in War organiser Jan Woolf told the Morning Star “that it is important that we commemorate the outbreak of the first world war in our particular style.

“For to understand the dynamics of the outbreak of that war is to understand the roots of war today.”

Many of those attending wore white peace poppies on their lapels.

In Glasgow thousands attended the official service marking the centenary.

Prime Minister David Cameron, First Minister Alex Salmond, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Labour Party leader Ed Miliband were all present.

Minister of Glasgow Cathedral Reverend Laurence Whitley opened the ceremony.

“We meet because on a summer’s day like this one, 100 years ago, the world changed.

“Our nations and peoples found themselves in a war the like of which had never before been seen and the memory of which still haunts us all.”

At the end of the service children carried candles in procession symbolising the “candle of peace and hope” being passed onto the next generation.