Reuters
People reacted with relief and joy on one side and disappointment laced with bitterness on the other yesterday after Scotland decided to stay part of the United Kingdom in a referendum on independence.
Many people stayed up all night to await the results, watching at home, gathered in pubs, or at counting centres.
The victory for the “Better Together” camp was near certain around 5am.
As people headed into work yesterday morning, politicians and churchmen spoke of the need for national reconciliation after months of impassioned debate, and defeated independence supporters said the struggle would go on.
Both sides also said they would do their best to make sure that the political parties in Westminster made good on their promises to give Scotland more autonomy.
“I won’t be dancing tonight,” said independence supporter Doug Bathgate, 58, who had worn a kilt to the counting headquarters at the Royal Highland Centre on the outskirts of the capital.
“No” activist Phil Wheeler, an Edinburgh Liberal Democrat who was also there, said he was delighted with the outcome. “I’d like to think (nationalist leader) Alex Salmond is hiding in his bunker,” he said.
In central Edinburgh, council-worker Alistair Lowe, 57, said he stayed up all night to watch the count and felt huge relief when it was clear the unionists had won. “I’m very happy,” he said. “I just felt that at my age, I fear more about my pension, my retirement. That’s what it meant to me.”
“I was worried the 16-year-olds might mess it up, like it was a Scotland-England game,” he added.
A major plank of the independence campaign was that Scotland should choose its own leaders, rather than be ruled from London by politicians that Scottish voters had not always backed – the ruling Conservatives have little support north of the border.
It also said an independent Scotland could build a fairer, more inclusive society.
The “Better Together” campaign said the ties that bind the nations of the United Kingdom were too deep to cut and that Scotland would be more secure within the bigger entity. Independence would carry far too much economic risk, including job losses and business flight, it said.
“It’s very disappointing. We’ve been stitched up like a kipper,” said Tom Dolan, 53, who was waiting at Waverley Station to put his friend Gill Davies on a train to London. “It was heart breaking. We’ve been bought and sold by London,” he said. “It will be crumbs we get from those public schoolboys, David Cameron, Boris Johnson. The country is morally corrupt,” said Davies, a national health service speech therapist.
Indicating how the debate had divided friends and families, she said her parents, farmers in the Borders region, had been very concerned about a victory for the independence movement. “My dad said it would have put paid to his business.”
Dolan poured scorn on banks who had said they would move their registered offices from Scotland in the event of independence. “They’ve got the people who nearly ruined our country laying down the rules,” he said.
