A DUNFERMLINE resident has hit out at the people who booed Nicola Sturgeon at an event marking the former town’s city status.
Videos showed a small number of people booing the First Minister as she approached Dunfermline City Chambers for a ceremony in the city.
Sturgeon joined Fife Provost Jim Leishman and Scottish Secretary Alister Jack in welcoming King Charles and the Queen Consort to Scotland’s newest city.
Linda Ferris wrote in the Dunfermline Press that she had “never been so ashamed of Dunfermline” after witnessing the boos directed at Scotland's First Minister.
The former business manager said it was an “embarrassment” for Dunfermline that a ceremony marking its city status should be “tuned into a political demonstration”.
“The people booing were politicising the event,” she told The National.
“It shouldn’t have been a political event at all but it just seems to be any excuse will do for some of these people.
“It was embarrassing. It was supposed to be a nice time for everybody to celebrate the city status and it was turned into a political demonstration.
“I’m annoyed that it was turned into something it shouldn’t have been.”
Ferris said the small numbers of people booing Sturgeon as she arrived to meet King Charles and Camilla “did not represent the city as a whole”.
She said some people have been confusing support for independence with support for republicanism.
“People seem to be getting the independence argument mixed up with the monarchy argument,” she said. “Nicola Sturgeon has already said she would keep the monarchy [in an independent Scotland].
“She has shown respect to the monarchy all along so why are people who are there to support the monarchy booing her?
“Dunfermline is an SNP city. We’ve got an SNP MP, SNP MSP and they did well in the local elections so it was very surprising that there was booing."
Despite being against the monarchy, Ferris said she “wouldn’t have gone down and booed the King”.
“To me it should have been a celebration of Dunfermline getting its city status,” she said.
During a speech on Monday, the King offered his “warmest congratulations” to the city as he said conferring the honour on Dunfermline would “gladden my dear mother’s heart”.
The former town is among eight communities awarded city status as part of the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
In a ceremony at Dunfermline City Chambers Charles said he had been “delighted” when the announcement of city status was made in May.
He spoke of his mother’s “deep love for Scotland”, describing it as “one of the foundations of her life”.
The King highlighted the new city’s “immense significance” in Scottish history as the birthplace of entrepreneur and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
Dunfermline is also the “burial place of kings and queens”, he noted, with Robert the Bruce, who led Scotland in a war against England in the 1300s, buried in the abbey there.
