When Alistair Darling urged indyref No voters to 'make history'

As for heading the Better Together campaign in 2012, however, the MP for Edinburgh South West had "seemed to blanch at the prospect of giving up more than two years of his life to the cause, while his friends made clear he was unmovable on the subject", the Herald reported.

Balls challenges Salmond to debate with Better Together

But an assessment of the risks of Scottish independence led to a change of heart, and Darling had agreed to lead the Better Together campaign.

"I decided that if I really believe in something, then I've got to be prepared to devote the time that I need for it", he said. "I don't think I could in all conscience have stood aside and said, 'I'll leave it to somebody else'.

"I really do care very much about the future of the country in which I live. We are better together and it's something that I'm prepared to devote the time that's needed to it."

Former Labour chancellor Alistair Darling has died

Darling's presence in the No campaign was widely welcomed by those who, whatever their political allegiance, were virulently opposed to Scottish independence. As David Cameron would reflect in his memoirs, it made sense for Labour to be the public face of the campaign, which meant putting the "even-minded, intelligent former chancellor Alistair Darling at the helm".

Gordon Brown, in his own memoirs - My Life, Our Times - said he had welcomed the decision by Ed Miliband, leader of the UK party, and Johann Lamont, leader of the Scottish party, to nominate Darling and Blair McDougall as the main Labour voices in the pro-union campaign.

'Better together' was already a phrase in use by those on the pro-Union side. Cameron, for one, had said in a speech on independence in Edinburgh that February: "Of course Scotland could govern itself. So could England. But we do it so much better together".

Ruth Davidson, Alistair Darling and Willie Rennie at the launch (Image: Gordon Terris)The SNP, for its part, believed that the name 'Better Together' could hamper their opponents, on the grounds that it failed to drive home the key message that people should vote No in 2014.

The venue chosen for the launch on Monday, June 25, was Edinburgh Napier University - the very place where, five years earlier, first minister Alex Salmond had launched A National Conversation, a white paper on the future of a referendum on constitutional change in Scotland.

Divisions will cheer Better Together opponents

As had been the case with the launch of the pro-independence grouping, Yes Scotland, in May 2012, considerable media attention was paid to the Better Together platform - to the people who would lead it and to aspects behind the scenes. The Sunday Herald reported on June 24 that the campaign had hired Blue State Digital, the company which worked on the online campaigns of US President Barack Obama and French President François Hollande, to build its website.

The same paper also forecast that the event "will be more like a victory celebration than a campaign launch because Unionists have persuaded themselves the referendum is all but won", pointing to recent polls which suggested that support for independence was down to the 35% mark.

Darling himself had been briefing Scottish newspapers that then-current difficulties in the eurozone had eclipsed independence, and that Scots would vote for "certainty, stability and the Union" come the referendum.

To reinforce the message, Better Together took full-page adverts in nine Scottish newspapers, which asserted that the UK offered the "best of both worlds" - a distinctive Scottish Parliament and the security of a union with Wales, England and Northern Ireland - and argued that Scots did not need to choose between them.

Tributes to Alistair Darling at memorial service

On June 25 itself the campaign handed out 500,000 leaflets at train stations across the nation, setting out 10 ways in which Scotland benefits from being part of the UK.

At Napier that Monday morning, Darling was joined by Johann Lamont, the Scottish Conservatives' leader Ruth Davidson and the Scottish Liberal Democrats' leader Willie Rennie.

Darling said that No voters had a chance to make history: "The truth is Scotland's future, our future and our families' future will be economically, politically, and socially stronger as a partner in the United Kingdom. The truth is that this coming together of family, friends, ideas, institutions and identities is a strength, not a weakness. It is an ideal worth celebrating".

He issued a plea: "If you've never campaigned on anything before this, nothing has ever mattered as much as this. Come and get involved. If you've never even voted in an election, get registered to vote now. This isn't about voting in a government for a few years. It is about making history".

Better Together: Independence will risk one million jobs

Pride of place at the launch went to around 40 Scots from across the country - "curiously prevalent from Inverness, Wishaw and the Clyde shipyards", in the words of The Herald - who testified to their attachment to the Union.

The Herald noted that Darling "spoke well enough on themes of passion and patriotism, aspiration and risk, but while he promised an upbeat campaign lauding the positive aspects of the Union, the undercurrent of threat and risk was never far away".

"Times are really tough at home and really uncertain, especially in Europe where all the problems of a currency union are laid bare", the former chancellor declared. "We need more growth, more jobs and a more prosperous Scotland.

Better Together makes complaint to the BBC

"These are the issues that Scotland should be focusing on. The last things we need are the new areas of uncertainty, instability and division that separation will involve."

“It is a big and difficult world and independence is an inadequate response,” Darling added. “Think of all the big questions the world is challenged by and then think, think really hard, about which of these questions is Scottish independence the answer. In a world of complicated and difficult questions, Scotland is being offered a simple slogan.”

Yes Scotland and how Alex Salmond launched push for independence

Darling said that the choice that would be made in two years' time would irrevocable. "If we decide to leave the United Kingdom, there is no way back. We can’t give our children a one-way ticket to a deeply uncertain future".

The launch was marked by a statement issued by David Cameron's office at 10 Downing Street. "We all know Scotland can stand on its own two feet", he said. "We just believe the UK is special and we would all lose if separation happened."

Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond before their second live BBC debate at the Kelvingrove art galleries, August 25, 2014 (Image: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)The long referendum campaign had now begun. Ahead, as the rest of the world looked on, lay month after month of claim and counter-claim, opinion polls, scare stories, endless references to 'Project Fear', largely hostile press coverage of the pro-independence campaign, and televised debates between Darling and Salmond. The prospect of Scotland becoming independent led to passionate conversations and arguments in homes and work-places across the country.

Phil Anderton joins Better Together team

Two days before referendum, the Daily Record published 'the Vow', an influential statement that Gordon Brown had been instrumental in drawing up. Signed by Cameron, Miliband and Nick Clegg, it promised Scotland extensive new powers to Holyrood if voters opted to reject independence. Brow had previously promised a "modern form of Scottish Home Rule" within the UK. As Salmond acknowledged in his referendum book, The Dream Shall Never Die, referring to the Vow : "This is the first thing that has worried me about press coverage for some time".

All told, the referendum campaign of 2014 was, as the historian Sir Tom Devine has recorded, "the most extraordinary political episode in the modern history of Scotland."