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Less than 24 hours after the polls had closed, the world was still watching as clashes broke out in the same location, as a group of emboldened No supporters descended on the square, determined to take it back. Spurred on by Facebook fascists Britain First, hundreds of loyalists—the kind of folk usually seen tagging alongside Orange Order parades—began gathering from early evening. Flares were set off, police horses called in and—for a couple of hours at least—hyperbolic online reports were depicting the city as a war-torn, riot-ravaged hellhole. Twitter went into a predictable meltdown, and a lot of people got very pissed off at BBC News for posting a "joke about bananas" on its Facebook page when there was a mini-riot taking place in Glasgow.It was amid the scenes unfolding around the square that images soon materialized of a last stand from two young women. Sisters Sophie and Sarah Johnson, aged 16 and 20, weren't looking to be the center of attention when they headed to the square, as they had also done in the days ahead of the vote. But, they told me, they would soon find themselves in the "complete polar opposite" situation: as Yes supporters in the middle of an increasingly volatile crowd of tanked-up loyalists.DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHO THIS GIRL IS SHE GOT GUTS #45 #INDYREF pic.twitter.com/qfqujwizDt
— Rab McEwan (@McEwanRab) September 20, 2014
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Grainy mobile photos show them standing their ground with a saltire, as a handful of outnumbered cops watch on. When 16-year-old Sophie's flag was wrenched from her grasp by a hostile, mostly male mob, laden with union flags, Vine footage captured by an onlooker would come to define perceptions of what had gone down in the square that night. In the febrile atmosphere of September 19, with passions running high, this imagery—of a young women standing up to a group of bullies—had an emotive pull. For many still reeling Yes supporters, it seemed to sum up everything they'd just been through."We didn't want to be pushed away. They [No supporters] were shouting at us to get out of the square and spitting on us," Sarah told me, explaining why they stuck around in the square for so long. "We had just as much right to be there and we weren't going to be cleared off just by them telling us to."However, they soon would be moved on when both were arrested by the police, accused of obstructing crowd control efforts. While Sarah and Sophie insisted they were simply using their right to peacefully demonstrate, the police soon grew tired. "We were led away, smiling, while the unionists cheered," Sophie said. "We were taken off to Cathcart police station. They couldn't take us to a nearby one as that's where No supporters were being sent. It was quite a long drive so we kept ourselves entertained by singing Flower of Scotland."
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