“The Tories have created a society for the greedy people,” Ms. McGeachy said.

Though Easterhouse was once infamous for drug dealing, alcohol addiction and social deprivation, antipoverty activists say that much has improved in the last decade. Crumbling housing projects have been torn down and a big new shopping complex opened. But the British government gets little credit for that.

People who are unemployed and living off government assistance seem to be hard for the “no” campaigners to sway, while the “yes” campaign says it is attracting many disillusioned people who normally do not vote at all.

Stephen Armour, 44, said he has lived off welfare since he was attacked in the street 19 years ago and suffered serious head injuries that left him with epilepsy and a hearing disability. He said he supported independence partly out of despair with his current situation.

His welfare payments amount to little more than £100 (about $160) a week, he said, and there is no prospect of a job in construction, the work he did before the attack. He said he had depression and found little to fill his days apart from trips to pick up medication. The “no” campaign’s warnings that the Scottish economy would be hurt by independence have had little impact on Mr. Armour, who said that “things can’t get any worse.”

Meanwhile, Alex Salmond, the leader of the “yes” campaign and Scotland’s first minister, seems to have had success in persuading people here that Scotland’s oil wealth could be deployed more equally across society, and that Scots could keep the pound as their currency even if they declared independence.

The leaders of the three major parties in London have all rejected sharing the pound, and the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, said Tuesday said that maintaining a common currency after independence was “incompatible with sovereignty.” Mr. Salmond says they are bluffing and that if London refused to negotiate a currency union, Scotland would walk away from its share of the national debt. Mr. Armour argued — as Mr. Salmond does — that “it’s our pound, too.”