The Point

Last updated: 27 June 2022.

Steve Arnott

Steve Arnott was one of the founders of the Democratic Green Socialist magazine, and was its editorial co-ordinator for the first sixteen issues. He currently edits and writes for its successor, The Point

Steve has been involved in left politics in Scotland for 30 years, and has been involved in a number of grass roots campaigns, including playing a leading role in the Fife anti-poll tax movement in the late eighties and early nineties. From 1984 to 2001 he was a member of Militant Tendency or as it became known later in Scotland, the Commitee for a Worker's International. Steve left the CWI in 2001 over political differences about how best to build the SSP

After graduating with MA honours in Philosophy from Dundee University, Steve was the Scottish Socialist Party’s Regional Organiser in the Highlands and Islands from 2000-2006, missing out by only a few hundred votes from being elected to the Scottish Parliament at the SSP’s high watershed of 2003, and serving on the SSP Executive consecutively from 2001-2006.

Following the SSP split, Steve served as Assistant National Secretary for Solidarity from 2006-2009, writing or co-writing many of Solidarity’s core documents, including its 2007 election manisfesto. At the end of 2007, he co-authored with Donald Morrison and Steve Mowat the post banking crisis political pamphlet ‘The Bubble Bursts’.

Steve is now committed to rebuilding left unity in Scotland and developing new left narratives for the 21st century. Describing himself as a Darwinist Marxist, and a committed secularist and rationalist, Steve continues to write regularly for The Point online magazine, and plays an active role in left politics and the Yes Scotland pro-independence campaign.

Articles by Steve Arnott in The Point

Cuba – An Essay in Pictures here

Saying no to Blandland – an interview with Independent MSP John Finnie here

In the week of the extremely successful first national conference of the Radical Independence movement, Point editor Steve Arnott interviewed independent MSP John Finnie about NATO, democracy, the Yes campaign and the prospects for re-alignment on the Scottish Left. John recently resigned from the SNP over its decision to support continued membership of NATO post-independence.

Reversing privatisation and PFI : Windfall offset financing: A way forward on public ownership here

European Stem Cell Patent Ban Threatens Research? here

Steve Arnott looks at the impact of the EU legal ruling banning stem cell research for commercial gain, and asks how progressives and the scientific community might now respond.

A Tribute to Neil Armstrong here

The recent untimely death of Neil Armstrong, the first human being to set foot on another world, touched many millions across the world. It seemed to remind us of a different, better era. By way of tribute we republish an article by Steve Arnott written on the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission which takes a look at a subject rarely touched on by the left when discussing the Soviet Bloc and the cold war – the space race and the historic achievements that came from it.