Colin Fox

In January 2015, Fox travelled to Athens as a guest of Syriza before its victory in the January 2015 Greek legislative election. He met with Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras and Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias Turrión, and said the election result was "something for socialists in Scotland to ponder deeply".

In June 2014, Fox wrote in the Scotsman: "No country in the world is more engaged in the democratic debate over self-determination than Scotland today. September’s referendum has energised people to a remarkable extent with debates on the 'democratic deficit' at the heart of Scottish politics now taking place in households, schools, workplaces, village halls and urban community centres from one end of the country to the other."

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

In 2012, Fox was invited to join the Yes Scotland Advisory Board as a representative of the SSP when the campaign was launched.

Fox addressed independence rallies in Edinburgh in 2012 and 2013, and spoke at the Oxford Union in May 2014 debating the motion: "This House believes Scotland should be an independent country". His opponents in the debate included Lord Jim Wallace and the Labour MP for Stirling, Anne McGuire.

In 2008, he wrote to the First Minister Alex Salmond seeking an assurance that any future meetings with members of the Northern Ireland Assembly would raise the issue of attitudes towards LGBT rights by its ministers. More recently he has also been involved in opposing community education cuts, and has marched against cuts to public services.

In October 2008, Fox stood for Rector of the University of St Andrews. He came second, losing to Kevin Dunion. He was asked to run for the position by members of St Andrews-based student groups such as Stop The War, due to his previous experience with the pro-peace and social justice movements. After losing the rectorial election in 2008, he maintained his links with the University and visited a student sit-in protest in 2009.

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

Fox lost his seat in the Scottish Parliament at the 2007 election, but continued to lead the party, campaigning on issues including Scottish independence, fuel poverty, bankers' bonuses, the occupation of Afghanistan, climate change, equal marriage, AIDS, and education cuts. He has contested a number of elections since 2007, standing as his party's top candidate in the 2009 European elections, in the Lothians region for the Scottish Parliament elections in 2007 and 2011, and against Alistair Darling in Edinburgh South West at the 2010 United Kingdom general election.

In 2007, he supported Greenpeace on board their ship Arctic Sunrise in their campaign against the replacement of the UK's nuclear weapons. He had previously visited a nuclear power station on the grounds that "I am a convinced opponent of nuclear power but an opponent who wants to conduct the debate about new nuclear capacity and our energy needs on the basis of facts. My visit to Torness is at my own request." In the same year he championed the cause of affordable access to housing with his support of Midlothian Council's investment in providing housing.

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.

In June 2005, Fox took part in a peaceful protest, interrupting Question Time in the Scottish Parliament, along with three other SSP MSPs, to highlight their claim that parliament had failed to secure the right to demonstrate outside the Gleneagles Hotel where the G8 were meeting. As a consequence, he was suspended from the Scottish Parliament for the whole of September and the salaries of the party's four MSPs and their staff were stopped—the severest penalty meted out to any peaceful protest in British parliamentary history.

In November 2004, the party's then national convenor, Tommy Sheridan MSP, chose to sue a tabloid newspaper 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.

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

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 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.

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.

He was active in the 1984–85 miners' 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.

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. 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.

Colin Fox (born 17 June 1959, in Motherwell) is the national co-spokesperson of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) and a former Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Lothians (2003–2007).