The Wee Blue Book was a multi-format publication published in 2014 and written by Stuart Campbell, editor of pro-independence blog Wings Over Scotland. It set out an economic case for Scottish independence as part of the pro-independence campaign in the run-up to the referendum held that year. The printed book was notable in the campaign for being created and published through crowdfunding, then being distributed by volunteers to locations where they could be picked up for free by the general public. It has subsequently formed the basis for several publications by other independence movements.
The book
The book had the subheading “The Facts the Papers Leave Out”, seeking to address the large media imbalance against independence in the debate - 21 Scottish or UK newspapers and magazines publicly endorsed a No vote against just one which declared for Yes. It was split into several short chapters, with most of the main chapters ending in a series of questions and answers. The chapters consisted of sourced data and quotations, combined with the author’s analysis. It made both a case that Scotland would be better governed as an independent state, and that Scotland would be financially better off as an independent country.
Publication
The 72-page book was originally produced as a downloadable version following an initial crowdfunding exercise in March 2014, with it being published as a digital edition on 11 August 2014. Within a month, the digital edition had been downloaded 550,000 times. 300,000 copies were subsequently printed, using money collected in an Indiegogo online fundraising campaign, and distributed across Scotland from the first week of September. It was also released as an audiobook and narrated video, translated into Gaelic and turned into a standalone website. In comparison, "Scotland's Future", the Scottish Government's so-called "White Paper" on independence, had a total of over 100,000 copies produced by the Scottish Government in four print runs at a cost of £1.25 million.
Reception
The book received a mixed reception. Economics blogger Simon Wren-Lewis wrote of the book’s analysis “The arguments in the Wee Blue Book are exactly that: no sustained economic argument, but just a collection of random quotes and debating points to make a problem go away.” Conversely, it was described by Spanish news website ABC.es as " Salmond's secret weapon". At the end of 2014, some commentators named The Wee Blue Book among their favourite books of the year: author Chris Dolan described it as "iconic" in the Herald, and in The Scotsman journalist and broadcaster Lesley Riddoch made it her top pick for its "portability and sheer audacity". After the referendum, Merryn Somerset Webb, editor of Moneyweek and member of the advisory board of anti-independence pressure group Scotland In Union, described it as the “Wee Book Of Nonsense”, whereas former SNP deputy leaderJim Sillars said that "Wee Blue Book introduced accessible, high quality analysis to referendum campaign" The First Minister of Scotland at the time of the referendum, Alex Salmond, said of the book that "People started waving the Wee Blue Book at me, at meetings and in the streets, and that’s where I learned about it. It was going off the shelves like hot cakes in 2014. It had a big effect in the latter stages of the referendum campaign."
Reuse of concept
Subsequent political campaigns have imitated the Wee Blue Book. The MEP group of the Scottish National Party published a similar document - The Wee Bleu Book - for the EU referendum campaign, and the movement for independence for the US state of California produced The Calexit Blue Book. The Wee Blue Book also inspired a Quebec independence publication
