Union debate has ‘divided the country’

The two sides in the Scottish referendum campaign have to begin a process of reconciliation from today, the head of strategic planning with the Better Together campaign has said.

The debate over the past number of months has been "an energising one but also one that has divided the country," Michael Marra told The Irish Times at the No campaign headquarters in Dundee. There was no doubt that people who were against independence had suffered "a huge amount of intimidation and anxiety", he said, with a poll yesterday showing that 85 per cent of No voters had felt intimidated.

‘Great anxiety’

Some of it was physical, some was verbal, and some was due to “the great anxiety” that was at play during the campaign. Mr Marra, a member of the Labour Party, worked in the Glasgow headquarters of the Better Together campaign for the past four months but was in his native Dundee yesterday helping get the vote out.

"The strategy was to emphasise the great benefits of the United Kingdom and expose what we saw as the huge holes in the nationalists' plans," he said. The No side set out to query what an independent Scotland would look like and contrast that with the benefits of the union, so that people could make an informed choice given the "risks and uncertainties" involved in separation.

While there was obviously a huge energy in the Yes campaign it would be wrong to think the No side were not equally determined and enthusiastic, he said. For some on the Yes side, independence was “why they got out of bed in the morning, and why they were involved in politics”, and this explained the “perceived difference” in the energy levels in the two sides.

Some senior nationalists had said the day after the vote would be “a day of reckoning”, but he thought that was the wrong attitude. “Scotland has to come together now and chart a course forward.”