IT MAY HAVE been the politicians fighting on the front lines during the last few weeks of the referendum, but it was the normal, everyday people that really made the difference, according to Thomas Docherty.

The Dunfermline and West Fife MP praised the citizens of his constituency for their involvement in grassroots politics. “The thing I think was most impressive about the No campaign in West Fife was that it wasn’t delivered by the politicians,” he said. “It was ordinary people who had never joined a political party that came forward and decided that they wanted to be involved.

“On Monday morning for example, we had no less than 40 people who turned up to leaflet in Inverkeithing and Rosyth - two-thirds of those who turned up were just ordinary West Fife citizens - Dunfermline Press readers! - and that has been the most amazing thing about the whole campaign.” Mr Docherty was surprised and pleased by how involved people have become over the campaign, and hopes that these levels can be kept up into the future. “It was absolutely amazing when you went round the communities talking to people - the level of awareness, the level of engagement,” he said. “I was at Queen Anne High School in Dunfermline talking to some of the students ahead of their exams and the referendum came up and it was clear that they were all engaged with it. We have to work together to ensure that the level of political engagement towards young people continues over the next 20 years. We need to make sure that this isn’t a ‘once in 20 years’ turnout.

“It will be hard and I think that one of the priorities is we now need to dial down the rhetoric, we need to allow those emotions. People are very raw - I understand that. A lot of people in the Yes campaign behaved with great dignity throughout this process and we saw that today - I had some enjoyable conversations at polling stations with SNP activists.

“But if we’re going to engage people in the political process, we’ve got to make politics less nasty - we’ve got to make politics ‘political debate.’”