Iain Shepherd, Chairman of the Yes, Johnstone, Linwood and the Villages campaign organising team, told The Gazette: “Whilst obviously the Yes campaign is disappointed not to have won the Referendum, there are a number of positives we can take from the whole process, like the size of the turnout, with over 90 per cent being recorded in many local polling stations, the engagement of the electorate in the debate and the huge numbers of requests for information we received, and the number of activists who came to help our local Yes campaign that had never been involved in politics before.

“Many of them now intend to stay engaged post referendum. There are over 100 activists who were not politically engaged prior to the campaign, but are now, and Yes won in the traditional Labour areas in Johnstone, Linwood and Elderslie.” Despite being defeated on Thursday night, Shepherd says it is not the end of the line for him and his fellow Yes activists, or their campaigning.

He explained: “After the initial disappointment of Friday, a new grass roots movement has evolved from the Yes campaign which is called the 45 per cent movement and it has folk of all political parties and none in it, which aims to put pressure on the Westminster parties to deliver the promises they made in the 10 days prior to the referendum.

“The movement has 150,000 registered members and our local campaign team has joined collectively and most of the activists have joined on an individual basis.

“The organising team of the former Yes Johnstone, Linwood and the Villages group will be meeting shortly to determine a strategy for campaigning over the next 12 months.

“We are not going to go away, because we believe that a cohesive offer of more powers for the Parliament will fail to deliver, because of oppostion from Tory and Labour back benchers at Westminster and also of David Cameron’s idea to link more powers for Scotland with implementing devolution for the English regions at the same time.

“There will be trade offs and compromises and Scotland will lose out.

“The organising team would like to thank the 150 or so activists who worked their socks off during the campaign to get a YES vote.

“We were stunned by the level of their committment and the work they did over a 15 month period in the run up to the referendum.

“Finally, we would like to thank everyone in the Johnstone, Linwood and the Villages campaign area who voted Yes and, whilst we didn’t get the win we’d like to let them know that the campaign to hold Westminster to the promises they made is now starting to get under way and they can help us by getting involved.”