Steely Scots make history with nae fuss

It looked, just briefly, as though everything was about to go horribly wrong. In parts of the country the morning passed with scarcely a ballot paper marked. By mid-afternoon reports were filtering in of a turnout that would see the exercise laughed to scorn. In Edinburgh and elsewhere, it began to rain. Whatever the Scots were up to, they were not making a song and dance out of home rule.

The polls had been solid enough. What no one knew for sure was the extent of the vote split between apathy and complacency. Half-way into the day, indeed, the suspicion was growing that some Scots cared a lot, but a lot of Scots, particularly at the country's fringes, did not care at all.

We had been here before, of course. In 1979, with a referendum constructed around the notion that 40 per cent of the entire electorate had to approve reform, Scotland had split in three: Yes, No and Beyond Caring.

Yet Thursday was supposed to have been different. What the late Labour leader John Smith had called "the settled will of the Scottish people" was to see the project through.

Beyond the polls, indeed, was the crushing defeat of the Conservatives at the May general election, when they had lost every last one of their Scottish MPs.

Scotland had voted then for reform: what obstacle remained? But the streets were ominously quiet. Few local party machines seemed to have organised themselves to get out the vote as they might have in a normal poll. Scarcely a celebration was planned, whatever the television later pretended to show after the pubs had closed and a few tipsy patriots found their way to the cameras outside Edinburgh's old Royal High School, putative site of the new Parliament.

It did not feel right. It certainly did not feel historic.

By early evening workers for Scotland Forward, the home rule umbrella group, were huddling nervously in the Scottish capital's pubs, drinking themselves sober and attempting to reassure one another.

Turnout was "patchy". Everyone said so. Perhaps under 50 per cent in Aberdeen; perhaps worse in Glasgow. Rural areas seemed like a vast, mysterious silence. Would the Borders vote No as emphatically as they had in 1979? Would the Shetland Movement argue again that separatism begins at home, that an Edinburgh parliament was as remote to them as one in London?

It was a question of credibility. If the turnout was too low, the supporters of the constitutional status quo in Scotland and in London would begin to pick apart the mandate of the referendum. The claim, customary in democracies, that one vote is enough would not be enough for Scotland.

The "40 per cent rule" of 1979 still applied, albeit in another guise. Besides, the local government electoral roll being used for the plebiscite was a mess, out of date and incomplete.

Meanwhile, the skies grew darker still. More rain fell on the High School, where a bunch of lonely souls had been holding a "vigil" for the parliament for an inadvertently symbolic 1,979 days. It began to look as if Scotland was about to make an utter fool of its old and noble self. But something both odd and ordinary was going on in the real world. People, it seemed, had indeed made up their minds long since. Having done so and being Scots, perhaps they had seen no need to make a fuss over the fact. So they had gone to their jobs and set about their day's work in offices and farms, shops and factories.

On the way home, perhaps after picking up the shopping, perhaps after stopping off for a couple of drinks, they had paused to destroy forever and all the idea that Scots did not want their parliament restored after 290 years. The gesture had been all but silent, yet implacable.

In the early hours of yesterday, as the results rolled in to Edinburgh, the real story became clear. The turnout had not been so great after all, but only because those opposed to reform had given up the ghost and failed to vote, in a mute acknowledgment of defeat.

Of those who turned out, 74 per cent wanted a parliament; 63 per cent said it should have a bit of power over taxation. Scots had made their history on the quiet. If you believed all you heard, a new day had dawned for a country that felt itself to be reborn. That was true enough, in its way.

But most people noticed too that it rained again in Edinburgh yesterday just the same.