Claire Fox

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Claire Fox, middle name Regina, was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party until its dissolution in 1996 and remains a leading associate of its successor, the libertarian anti-environmental LM network. In particular, she founded and leads its largest entity, the Institute of Ideas. She lives in north London, is unmarried and childless, and has two sisters, Gemma Fox, adopted and three years younger, who is a project manager for a women’s centre in Rhyl, north Wales, and Fiona Fox, four years younger, who was also a leading member of the RCP, is also associated with the LM network, and leads the Science Media Centre.

Claire Fox at Sheffield Doc/ Fest 2011

Claire Fox on Question Time 2004

'Claire Foster' AKA Claire Fox as a Revolutionary Communist Party council candidate in Newcastle, as featured in The next step, 2 May 1986, p. 4.

Early years and education

Fox was born on 5th June 1960 in Barton-Upon-Irwell, a suburban area of Eccles in Greater Manchester, to John Fox, who ran a plant-hire business, and Maura Cleary, who was noted for her strength of character. Both came from Irish farming backgrounds and were highly religious.

Brought up in Clywd, North Wales, she was characterised as having a domineering character even as a child. Despite attending St. Richard Gwyn Catholic High School, a school she later characterised as a "bog standard comp", she was able to obtain admission to Warwick University, finally achieving a lower second class degree in English and American literature.

Career

Following university, Fox became a social worker from 1981 to 1987, working in mental health, with the homeless in Coventry, and with battered women. She then became an English Language and Literature lecturer for special needs adults at Thurrock Technical College (now Thurrock and Basildon College) during 1987-90. Obtaining a PCGE from Thames Polytechnic (now the University of Greenwich) in Eltham during 1991-1992, she taught at West Herts College during 1992-1999.

Revolutionary Communist Party

Disillusioned with the then Labour government and having been exposed to Catholic liberation theology as a teenager, Fox joined the Socialist Workers Party as a student at Warwick University, despite a background as an anti-abortion activist with the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child. Considering the SWP crude and untheoretical, she left them to join the Revolutionary Communist Tendency, later renamed the Revolutionary Communist Party, possibly partly due to their uncritical pro-Irish Republican line, which will have resonated with Fox’s Irish Catholic background. Her strong Republican leanings are suggested by the role of her sister Fiona as a leading member of RCP front the Irish Freedom Movement and editor of its bulletin Irish Freedom. Though her anti-abortion and Catholic background delayed her admission, Claire Fox was eventually accepted. She stood in the local elections for the party in May 1986, contesting the Benwell ward in Newcastle. She remained a member until its dissolution in 1996, becoming a branch organiser and then leaving her teaching job to work on its monthly magazine Living Marxism with a party name (pseudonym) of Claire Foster.

LM network

When the RCP disbanded, Fox relaunched Living Marxism as LM, taking the role of co-publisher with Helene Guldberg.. After the magazine was bankrupted in a libel trial in 2000, Fox founded the Institute of Ideas, building on the existing RCP summer school, while other members set up on line magazine Spiked. She is a director, company secretary and shareholder of the company which runs the Institute, the Academy of Ideas, and is the director of the Institute.

Other activities

Fox is regularly invited to comment on developments in culture, education, politics and the arts on BBC programmes such as Question Time, Any Questions? and Breakfast and on SkyNews Review. She has been a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze since 2001, later joined by LM associate Kenan Malik, while other LM associates regularly appear on the programme as witnesses. She writes for national newspapers and a number of specialist journals, has a monthly column in the MJ (Municipal Journal) and presented ‘Claire Fox News’ on the defunct internet TV channel 18 Doughty Street during 2006/7. She is also a Member of the European Cultural Parliament and sits on the Advisory Board of the Economic Policy Centre.

She is a columnist for The Free Society, which describes itself on its website as a group that has been "launched by the smokers’ lobby group Forest to give a voice to those who want less not more government interference in their daily lives".

Publications

Popular press, Magazines articles (including the next step and Living Marxism/LM) and web publications

1996

• Claire Fox, 'Taboos: A comprehensive failure', Living Marxism, No. 89 - April 1996, p. 8.
• Claire Fox, 'Disruptive pupils: teachers give wrong answer', Living Marxism, No. 91 - June 1996, p. 29.
• Claire Fox, 'Degrading education', Living Marxism, No. 95 - November 1996, p. 24.
• Claire Fox, 'Who's afraid of schoolchildren?', Living Marxism, No. 96 - December/January 1996/1997, p. 14.

1997

• Claire Fox, 'Nanny Blunkett knows best', LM 100, p. 18, May 1997.
• Claire Fox, 'A day out on the hunting demo', LM 103, September 1997, p. 19.
• Claire Fox, 'The dumbing down of higher education', LM 104, p. 24, October 1997.

1998

• Helene Guldberg and Claire Fox, 'Appeal in Defence of Free Speech', LM 108, p. 24, March 1998.
• Claire Fox and Helene Guldberg, 'Free Speech Wars festival', LM 109, p. 19, April 1998.
• Claire Fox, 'And the Devil spake unto her', LM 110, May 1998.
• Claire Fox, 'Snobs against sobbing', LM 111, p. 22, June 1998.
• Claire Fox, 'Loaded questions', LM 112, p. 16, July/August 1998.
• Claire Fox, 'Connected TV', LM 115, November 1998, p. 14.

1999

• Claire Fox, 'Docusoap meets current affairs', LM 118, p. 40, March 1999.
• Claire Fox, 'Culture Wars', LM 119, p. 12, April 1999.
• Claire Fox, 'Does life imitate Shakespeare?', LM 120, p. 20, May 1999.
• Claire Fox, 'Museums: don't touch the exhibits', LM 122, p. 42, July/August 1999.
• Claire Fox, 'Social inclusion': excluding ideas', LM 123, p. 35, September 1999.
• Claire Fox, 'What is so Scottish about that?', LM 125, p. 18, November 1999.
• Claire Fox, 'Are you who you write?', LM 126, p. 32, December/January 1999/2000.

2000

• Claire Fox, 'Veiled truths', LM 128, p. 40, March 2000.
• Claire Fox, 'The hollow men', LM 129, p. 32, April 2000.
• Claire Fox, 'Your guide to joining the new cultural elite', LM 129, p. 34, April 2000.

2007

• Claire Fox, 'The folly of the 16-year-old voter', The Sunday Times, 8 July 2007. (Registration required)
• Claire Fox, '2012 Cultural Olympiad', Time Out, 24 July 2007.
• Claire Fox, 'Anything but the arts', myA&B Arts & Business blog, 16 July 2007.
• Claire Fox, 'Strike up the band for elitism', The Australian, 18 August 2007.
• Claire Fox, 'Debate is being stifled by a new form of inquisition', The Independent, 25 October 2007.

2008

• Claire Fox, 'Religion and free speech', Time Out, 11 December 2008.

2009

• Claire Fox, 'A needle in a haystack', MJ (municipal journal), 4 March 2009.
• Claire Fox, 'Wheeling out the unpalatable', MJ (municipal journal), 25 March 2009.
• Claire Fox, 'Give this moralising the brush-off', MJ (municipal journal), 22 April 2009.
• Claire Fox, 'Engagement is kids’ stuff', MJ (municipal journal), 30 April 2009.
• Claire Fox, 'Censorship is the wrong way to combat BNP', Index on Censorship, 3 June 2009.
• Claire Fox, 'Censoring the BNP 3: Claire Fox responds to Andy Newman', Index on Censorship, 10 June 2009.
• Claire Fox, 'Give us some space', MJ (municipal journal, 22 July 2009.
• Claire Fox, 'Article on idealism', Fabian Review, Summer 2009.
• Claire Fox, 'Could sisters do it all better?', MJ (municipal journal), 12 August 2009.
• Claire Fox, 'Stop monitoring the public', MJ (municipal journal), 30 September 2009.
• Claire Fox, 'Academy strikes back: the fight for 'useless' knowledge starts here', Times Higher Education, 1 October 2009.
• Claire Fox, 'Don't ban the BNP - even racists deserve a debate', London Evening Standard, 19 October 2009.

Affiliations

LM network

• Informinc appointed 29 January 1997, company dissolved 21 April 2004 | Living Marxism | Academy of Ideas, Secretary and director appointed 16 March 2000 | Institute of Ideas - founder | Fiona Fox, sister.

Conservative movement

• The Free Society | Economic Policy Centre

Other

• Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child | BBC Radio 4, The Moral Maze, on which she is a panellist

Resources

• Twitter: "Fox_Claire"

Reference

• Institute of Ideas, Claire Fox Institute of Ideas website, accessed 29 Dec 2010

Profiles

• Andrew Billen, A prickly opinion on just about everything (profile of Claire Fox), The Times, 17 December , 2002
• Blank, Daily Politico: Claire Fox, “Total Politics”, 17 August 2008
• Dam, Mohana, Discovery of India, “Express India”, 18 January 2009
• Fox, Claire, My Cultural Life, “New Culture Forum”,
• Stuart Jeffries, Infamy's child, The Guardian, 19 November 2005. (profile of Claire Fox)
• Marc Kidson, 'What the big idea?', “Cherwell”, 29 October 2009
• Mukherjee, Uddalak, ‘Room to argue, “The Telegraph, Calcutta”, 11 January 2009
• Nye, Richard, “Foxing Clever”, “The Richmond Magazine” March 2008
• Obermueller, Mailin and Diana Leca, Interview with Claire Fox and Angus Kennedy from the Institute of Ideas, “Cultural Diplomacy News”, 28 August 2009
• Caroline Scott, Claire and Fiona Fox, sisters, “Sunday Times”, 28 May 2006.
• Huw Spanner, Hope for the Best (Interview with Claire Fox),' Spanner Media April 2007.