  The conjecture that the elementary fermions are knotted flux tubes permit the
construction of a phenomenology that is not accessible from the standard
electroweak theory. In order to carry these ideas further we have attempted to
formulate the elements of a field theory in which local SU(2) x U(1), the
symmetry group of standard electroweak theory, is combined with global SU_q(2),
the symmetry group of knotted solitons.
