In the last hour, Nick Clegg has come to Glasgow to pay his respects at the Clutha pub site. Few people will forget the horror of Friday night’s events when a police helicopter crashed into the bar, killing nine people. He and Secretary of State for Scotland Alistair Carmichael laid flowers there and read some of the other floral tributes that people have been leaving over the weekend.

I watched in shock and horror as the events unfolded on Twitter on Friday night. I was on my way home from a night out in Edinburgh, laughing and joking with friends just as those in the Clutha bar had been. People described the human chains rescuing people from the pub. Who could not be moved by the interview with Labour MP Jim Murphy? He’d been passing by. He could have kept going, but he, like many others,  did what he could to help. The shock on his face was clear as he spoke to the media a while later. The BBC has some eyewitness accounts of people who were in there which give a real sense of the dust and the dark. What amazed me most was how calm people were as they got out and helped others to safety, even though some were acutely aware that there could be a second explosion and fire.

I felt worried until all of my friends from Glasgow were accounted for. Some of them knew the bar well and might well have been there. The agony of those relatives who had to wait days for news came across on every news bulletin. These rescues are by necessity slow, painstaking and precarious. The last thing you want is for more people to be hurt  or killed, but it makes the nightmare wait so much longer.

After Nick’s visit this morning, he spoke to BBC News. He said:

It’s an awful thing, of course, but the very best of a community is sometimes revealed when the most tragic things happen and I think that’s what we’ve seen in Glasgow in the last few days.

I think the whole country is full of admiration for the way in which the community here has come together in the past few days. It’s a city united in sadness and grief but also united in heartfelt compassion and sympathy  for those affected by the terrible events of Friday night and also united in unequivocal support for the exceptional job done by the emergency services who have worked tirelessly since Friday night in very difficult circumstances and also have had to mourn or are  mourning their own friends and colleagues.

He added that the way people had reacted was a tribute to Glasgow’s spirit, making special reference to those who had stopped by and gone towards danger to help people escape. He went from the site to meet community representatives and find out more about the efforts to help those affected.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social