Sheridan: I don’t want to be British, I’m Scottish

SSP Research, Policy & Media Unit
Press Release: 12/08/05

Scottish Socialist Party MSP Tommy Sheridan today attacked the assault on multi-culturalism by “racists, Islamophobes and British chauvinists” and said that he would fail a British citizenship test being talked of for immigrants.

Tommy said that he specifically rejected any semblance of British identity; an identity which was dripping with the blood of the people enslaved by the British empire around the world and more recently with the blood of Iraqi’s slaughtered by Britain’s role in the invasion of Iraq.
Tommy accused Conservative politicians of making remarks that were identical to the language used by the National Front in the late 1970’s and more recently by the British National Party.

Tommy said;
“The past weeks have seen a tidal wave of British chauvinism, Islamophobia and racism descend on us, stirred up by the far right, the Conservative Party and, shamefully, from some liberal and left wing commentators,

“For Conservative shadow ministers to talk of deporting people who reject a British identity puts them in the same sewer as the far right neo Nazi’s like the BNP.

“Those who demand we all swear allegiance to a British identity had better prepare to deport every Scot who sees themselves as a republican.

“I want to see Britain broken up and the Crown made redundant, not swear allegiance to them.

“An independent Scottish socialist republic which banished poverty, obscene inequality and nuclear weapons would secure my allegiance.

“I consider Britain to be a blood-thirsty monster which spread it’s influence across the globe at the end of a bayonet and a canon.”