Tommy Sheridan presents RT UK’s alternative Christmas message (VIDEO)

Coinciding with Queen Elizabeth II’s annual Christmas Day broadcast, Scottish socialist and independence campaigner Tommy Sheridan presents RT’s alternative Christmas message, reminding Britons to open their hearts to refugees.

Sheridan, head of Solidarity Scotland, has delivered a message urging revelers to remember those in need in their community.

He says the central message of the nativity story is essentially about refugees.

“What does the nativity story really tell us? What is it really all about? It’s about refugees.

“It’s about people who are homeless looking for a place to stay, a roof over their heads. Maybe that’s the type of message that gets lost in the hustle and bustle of the commercialization of Christmas, that’s all aboutpresents,” he says.

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Sheridan says it’s important to remember that welcoming people is a core Christian value, and implores listeners not to be “hypocritical.”

“I hope we’re not hypocritical in celebrating Christmas on the one hand, but then being clearly racist and un-Christian on the other, by saying ‘we don’t want these refugees coming here.’”

Sheridan, who led a mass campaign of civil disobedience in the late 1980s and early 1990s against the poll tax, says as well as thinking of Syrian refugees, the British people must also remember those in their own communities unable to celebrate Christmas.

“This time of the year focuses our minds on the importance of friendship and the importance of family,” he says. “[It’s a time to] think about those who cannot afford to provide [for] their children, think of the health workers and the emergency services, think about the low-paid shop workers.”

As well as mulling over the true meaning of Christmas, Sheridan begs Scottish National Party (SNP) MPs and MSPs to “remember their anti-austerity mandate,” and resist Conservative cuts imposed from Westminster.

He shares his hopes for a new Scotland, calling for a second referendum on independence in 2018.