Some on the left have glibly appropriated the episode as Scotland’s revolutionary ‘Petrograd’ moment which required the government to send in tanks and English troops to restore order and prevent insurrection.

Historians Gordon J Barclay and Louise Heren have now systematically demolished the myth by charting how it came about and meticulously researching contemporary police records, trial and newspaper reports and the files of the Glasgow Trams Authority (the trams kept working to the dismay of strikers seeking to shut down the city.)

There is no doubt that many strikers were injured during the fighting which erupted when police tried to clear a path for besieged trams and continued into the night. A police officer, who had survived the horrors of the trenches, succumbed to injuries received after being struck be a bottle – he was the sole fatality.

Regrettable as this was, does this rammy really merit the appellation of ‘Bloody’? Consider other ‘Bloody’ events. Over 200 peaceful petitioners were massacred by Tsarist troops during the ‘Bloody Sunday’ which sparked the 1905 Russian Revolution. In 1916, five trade unionists were shot during the ‘Bloody Sunday’ Everett massacre in the United States – the tally was probably greater and trigger-happy redneck sheriffs succeeded in accidentally killing two of their own men. The deplorable record of the British in Ireland also produced two ‘Bloody Sundays’. The legal consequences of the killing of 14 Catholics by the Parachute regiment in 1972 are still being played out. In 1920 another ‘Bloody Sunday’ was perpetrated when, in Dublin’s Croke park, British soldiers and ‘Black and Tan’ auxiliaries opened fire on a crowd watching a Gaelic football match killing 14 spectators, including three children, and wounding 60 more.

The George Square punch-up is hardly in the same category but because of its now legendary status Bloody Friday does merit this first comprehensive study.

The authors find that the Glasgow police were chronically understaffed with hundreds of officers still in the armed forces. Against this background the sheriff principal, after consulting with the lord provost and chief constable, requested the intervention of the military.

The right wing press ran scare stories about a revolutionary insurrection and the Liberal Scottish secretary, a former lord advocate, Robert Munro, hysterically declared that Glasgow was on the brink of a “Bolshevist uprising”.

The Riot Act had been read but Glasgow was never under martial law. Although some English troops (the East Surreys) were involved the authors find that the vast majority of the 10,000 sent to Glasgow came from six of Scotland’s 10 infantry regiments. And tanks were never deployed on George Square as is popularly maintained. Troops were put on guard duty of public buildings days after the rioting subsided and not one shot was ever fired in anger.

Later memoirs by Red Clydeside leaders posited a conspiracy theory that the police had charged the crowd to provoke a riot and create the pretext for the deployment of troops in Glasgow. Barclay and Heren ably demonstrate that this was not the case.

The Battle for George Square 1919 is an important contribution to the history of Scotland in the 20th century. It is a relentless search for the truth and the authors have no ideological axe to grind – for the record Louise Heren describes herself as a socialist with a small ‘s’.

Far too many histories in our ‘post-truth’ society are now produced to prove a theory or support a particular ideology. In the newspapers we used to call it ‘writing to the headline’ and the Daily Mail was, by far, the worst culprit. This scholarly book is history as it should be – well researched and presented with integrity.

The Battle for George Square 1919: Myth, Memory and the Military in Red Clydeside By Gordon Barclay, Louise Heren. Published by Birlinn, 368pp, £25.