THE No campaign in last year's independence referendum deliberately exaggerated the "cybernat" phenomenon in an effort to discredit its opponents, the former head of Yes Scotland has claimed.

In a rare direct attack on his opponents, Blair Jenkins said Better Together, the pro-UK campaign, cynically highlighted cases of online abuse directed at prominent No campaigners.

His comments were dismissed by Better Together leader Alistair Darling, who said "cybernattery" had cast a shadow over the referendum campaign.

Better Together activists were routinely targeted by pro-independence "trolls" who used the internet to intimidate opponents.

High profile No supporters including the writer JK Rowling and singer Susan Boyle were also abused.

David Bowie was told to "f*** off back to Mars" on social media when, in a statement delivered by the model Kate Moss, he said: "Scotland stay with us."

Yes campaigner also suffered abuse but the complaints were louder on the No side.

Mr Jenkins told The Herald: "There was inexcusable behaviour by some people on social media but it was only a tiny minority of people.

"The fact it was hyped and inflated and exaggerated I think was quite a deliberate and cynical campaign tactic by the No side

"I think most people in Scotland thought they were going through a good, healthy democratic process."

He added: "Someone on the Better Together side decided at some point they had to persuade people this was not actually a good democratic process, it's actually something quite nasty that's happening.

"Therefore there was an attempt to talk up the bad behaviour to make the point this was quite divisive.

"I think that was a deliberate misrepresentation."

Mr Jenkins revealed he was subjected to online abuse during the campaign.

But he said: "I never drew attention to it because I never felt people who were sending me that stuff were representative of the No campaign or were typical of the people I was speaking to.

"When you have as many people on social media as we now have, it's like society at large.

"You are going to get people who won't behave well."

He insisted Yes Scotland did all it could to encourage courtesy in online exchanges.

He said Yes Scotland investigated the "unforgivable" abuse heaped on Harry Potter author Ms Rowling, who donated large sums of money to the No campaign.

He said: "When we checked them out, they did not follow Yes Scotland accounts, they did not seem to have any connection.

"They were simply people who went on social media and liked to abuse well known people."

"It's a regrettable thing about where we are, in the early days of social media, that there are people who have a megaphone and they use the megaphone to abuse people."

Mr Darling said there was "no point denying" the widespread online abuse.

He said: "Cybernattery is now commented on throughout the UK and the world.

"People looked at it and said what is going on here.

"Some of it was pretty vicious stuff."

He cited the backlash suffered by businessman Bill Munro, the founder of Barrhead Travel, after he emailed staff to say a Yes vote would be a "disaster".

Mr Munro was compared to Robert Mugabe by cybernats who tried to organise a boycott of the travel firm.