Wee White Blossom

About the Book: 

So stands Scotland where it did? Not on your nelly.

The professional classes in Scotland may be busy with Commissions, vows, deals, submissions and General Election planning but the wider Yes Movement is busy with huge spontaneous meetings involving hundreds, even thousands of people – gatherings like birds flocking before winter or starlings swooping to throw shapes into darkening skies. Because they can.

Wee White Blossom is a post-indyref, poppadom-sized version of Blossom for folk who’ve already sampled the full bhuna. It updates Blossom with a new chapter on Scotland’s Year of Living Dangerously. Lesley Riddoch shares her thoughts on the Smith Commission, the departure of Gordon Brown, the return of Alex Salmond and the latest developments in land reform and local control. She considers the future of the SNP, the Radical Independence Campaign, Common Weal, Women for Independence and Scottish Labour in the aftermath of the referendum. This is a plain-speaking, incisive call to restore equality and control to local communities and let Scotland flourish.

Wee White Blossom is the ideal companion volume to Blossom, whether you want an update on the first edition or an appetiser before delving into the pages of the original.

Reviews: 

The most influential, passionate and constructive book to appear during the referendum campaign. Blossom seized readers because it argued for independence as means to an end – restoring control over their own lives to Scottish communities so disempowered by top-down authority that they had no real experience of democracy. NEAL ASCHERSON

A brilliant, moving, well written, informative, important and valuable piece of work.  ELAINE C SMITH

Not so much an intervention in the independence debate as a heartfelt manifesto for a better democracy. ESTHER BREITENBACH, Scotsman

About the Author:

LESLEY RIDDOCH is an award-winning broadcaster, writer, journalist, independence campaigner and land reform activist. She writes weekly columns for The National and is a contributor to The Guardian, BBC Question Time, Scotland Tonight and Any Questions. She is founder and Director of Nordic Horizons, a policy group that brings Nordic experts to the Scottish Parliament and produces a popular weekly podcast. Lesley has presented You and Yours on BBC Radio 4, The Midnight Hour on BBC2 and The People’s Parliament and Powerhouse on Channel 4. She founded the Scottish feminist magazine Harpies and Quines, won two Sony awards for her daily Radio Scotland show and edited The Scotswoman – a 1995 edition of The Scotsman written by its female staff. She was a trustee of the Isle of Eigg Trust that pioneered the successful community buyout in 1997. She has presented and co-produced films about the Faroes, Iceland and Norway and during lockdown, presented Declaration, a film celebrating the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath. Lesley was awarded a PHD in July 2020 and lives near the sea in north Fife.