More than a century ago, in the cold hard months after the end of the Great War, thousands of striking workers gathered in Glasgow’s George Square.

As trade unionists rallied for a shorter working week somebody, amid a welling sea of flat caps, raised a red flag. The flash of colour helped, or so the story goes, to raise alarm among the powers-that-be of a revolutionary mob.

The result, some days in to the protests, was a police charge and sporadic clashes between strikers and officers in the city’s centre.

This Battle of George Square, on January 31, 1919, has sparked debate and discussion over its meaning and significance ever since. However, it has also inspired invention, fuelling a seemingly unending demand for fake history on social media, in newspaper reports and even popular books.

The thrust of the myths: that the British Government, often in the person of Winston Churchill, sent largely English troops to Glasgow to quell a revolt with concocted details including tanks and machine gun posts in George Square itself.

Now, The Herald on Sunday, can reveal, the fake history of the Red Clydeside is so embedded in popular consciousness that it has made it in to the exam system.

A copy of the marking key for this year’s National 5 or N5 history prelims obtained by The Herald says students should be given credit for repeating the myths.

So, for school children, being wrong is the right answer, at least in one area of the history syllabus.

Gordon Barclay is an historian writing a book about the events of 1991 who has been countering fake history on social media. Asked how he reacted to the new marking key he said he was “disappointed but not surprised”.

“The wells of history have been poisoned by the mythology around the Battle of George Square,” Barclay said. “Populist histories repeat invented facts about these events, such as that there were tanks in the square or all the troops were English or there were even howitzers on the roof of the City Chambers.”

Education authorities have made mistakes on George Square as well. Teaching insiders stress this is understandable: there is so much popular misinformation around the events that it was almost inevitable that this would seep in to the classroom, just as it has in to mainstream media.

A standard school book approved by Scottish exam body SQA on the Great War - including its causes and aftermath - included the myths but this was corrected two years ago.

Barclay said: “The N5 textbooks in use between 2013 and 2018 presented a substantially mythologised versions of events “So it is hardly surprising the exam system is testing pupils open the fake history they are taught.”

Children are unlikely to sit their National 5 exams - roughly the equivalent of old Ordinary and then Standard Grades - next year because of the Covid crisis. Teachers will assess their performance.

The marking key obtained by The Herald is for prelims, not the final exams, and is highly confidential. It is produced in line with SQA guidance by a niche publisher based in Stirling called P&N and sent to schools in advance to help teachers assess pupils.

Phil Harding, the owner of P&N, acknowledged there was a problem with the section on the Battle of George Square.

He said: “Prelim questions and marking keys go through stringent checks and it is regrettable that a debated/frequently misrepresented point has been included in the marking key without further qualification.

“Marking keys are written by our setters using their own considerable examination experience and the necessary reference to standard historical texts and teaching resources.”

Harding stressed that the marking key would be seen by teachers, not pupils, and that questions in prelims themselves did not contain anything inaccurate. He also suggested it would be wrong for students to be marked wrong for repeating something, even something wrong, which they had been taught.

He concluded: “It is a possible “point of knowledge” that a candidate might give based on the texts which have been available to them throughout their studies.

“It would be unfair for a candidate to be penalised for using knowledge which has been presented to them from recognisable and trusted sources.”

Barclay has argued that the Battle of George Square has become the most mythologised event in modern Scottish history. The popular story, moreover, has changed over the years too as it became as much celebrated by nationalists as it was by the left.

However, almost all political or social movements are susceptible to invented or fake history. Barclay has recently been forced to bust myths in both the ultra-unionist and ultra-unionist social media eco-systems. Each side has falsely claimed the other wanted to do a deal with Adolf Hitler.

The culture wars being waged across much of the western world have left historians in a difficult position. Most stress that new interpretations of the past - and new facts too - can come to light.

In more authoritarian regimes fake history is regularly finding its way in to school text books and the exam system.

Scotland’s independent exam regulator, the SQA, stressed that it had nothing to do with the marking key suggesting credit for falsehoods in prelims.

A spokesman said: “P&N are a commercial organisation. SQA has had no involvement with the detailed marking instructions associated with the P&N prelim paper for N5 History. We have no role in approving their assessments.”