Colin Fox

Colin Fox (born 17 June 1959, in Motherwell) is a Scottish socialist politician and left-wing activist, serving as national co-spokesperson of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) since 2005.

As a prominent LPYS activist, he attracted the attention of the Militant tendency, and joined in 1981.

He was elected as their Lanarkshire organiser in 1983 and has been heavily involved in socialist politics ever since.

He was active in the 1984–1985 miners's strike in Ayrshire and at the Ravenscraig picket line.

The 103-day Caterpillar occupation of 1987–88 saw him involved in the key industrial battle of the time.

In 1988, he went to London to work for Militant at its headquarters in Hackney Wick.

He held a variety of posts in its industrial department, finance department, and as circulation manager of the Militant newspaper.

Here, he was heavily involved in the leadership of the anti-poll tax struggle which brought down Margaret Thatcher.

In 1995, he moved to Edinburgh to take up the role of Scottish Militant Labour's East of Scotland organiser.

This was the time when Militant was discarding its entryist tactics and turning towards open mass work.

As a member of SML's executive committee, he was heavily involved in the discussions with some smaller groups on the left that led to the formation of the Scottish Socialist Alliance (SSA) in 1995.

The SSA aimed to build a left-wing alternative to New Labour and the SNP.

It was built around the slogan "for an independent socialist Scotland".

Fox was the SSA's East of Scotland organiser, a role he continued to play when the Alliance morphed into the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) in 1998.

He led the Scottish Socialist Party in the Lothians into the first Scottish Parliament election in 1999.

This was the election where Tommy Sheridan, then an SML councillor, was elected as the SSP MSP for Glasgow region.

Over the course of the next four years, Colin helped build the SSP as it trebled in size.

The party in parliament succeeded in passing legislation to abolish poindings and warrant sales in 2002.

Using Sheridan's popularity, the SSP made several interventions including supporting the Fire Brigades Union dispute of 2002.

But above all, it was the role the party played in the huge movement against the Iraq War that cemented the SSP's place in Scottish politics.

He was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Lothians region from 2003 to 2007.

Against pundits' predictions, the SSP won six seats at Holyrood in 2003, including Fox in the Lothians region.

Winning by just 68 votes out of 300,000, Fox was famously captured on TV hurtling across the floor of Meadowbank Stadium in Edinburgh when his result was finally declared.

Like his SSP colleagues, Fox refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen and was ejected from the swearing-in ceremony for singing Robert Burns' anthem Is There for Honest Poverty (or A Man's a Man for A' That) in protest.

He sat on the Scottish Parliament's justice committee for four years and visited many of Scotland's prisons, arguing for reform.

He presented a Member's Bill, one of only six to get to the debating floor that session, to abolish National Health Service prescription charges in Scotland.

The bill won the backing of the parliament's health committee, but was eventually voted down by Labour, Conservative, and Lib Dem MSPs.

Sheridan, the party's then national convenor, chose to sue a tabloid newspaper in November 2004 over stories it published about his private life.

Sheridan's decision to sue the News of the World, against the advice of the SSP executive committee, led to it demanding his resignation as convenor.

Sheridan lied throughout two high-profile trials and was eventually sentenced to three years in jail, convicted on five counts of perjury.

Described in The Herald as "one of Scotland's most prominent socialists", he is a founding member of the SSP and Scotland's longest-serving party leader or spokesperson, having been originally elected as the SSP's convener in February 2005.

He was a member of the Yes Scotland Advisory Board.

Fox was born in Motherwell.

Both of his grandfathers were steelworkers, his mother was a nurse and his father an insurance salesman with the Co-operative Insurance Society.

He attended Our Lady's High School before studying Mathematics at Strathclyde University and Accountancy at Bell's College, Hamilton (now part of the University of the West of Scotland).

The Scottish Government of 2007–11 later picked up the bill and introduced it themselves.

He graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Social Sciences from the Open University in 2013.

Colin currently lives in Edinburgh, with his partner and children.

Fox joined Scottish Labour in Motherwell and Wishaw as a teenager and established Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) branches throughout Lanarkshire.

He has described Tony Benn as "one of my heroes", and says that it was after attending a talk given by Benn at the University of Glasgow, when Benn was running for the Deputy Leadership of the Labour Party, that he was inspired to get involved in politics full-time.