London, Birmingham and Manchester (three of the biggest cities in the UK) all now have minority ‘white British population’ with people from ethnic backgrounds forming the majority population.
London is now 37% white British, while Birmingham is now 43% white British and Manchester is 48.7%.
The trend is no different in Leicester (59% population from ethnic backgrounds) and Luton and many boroughs of London are overwhelmingly multicultural such as Newham, Slough, Harrow, Brent and Redbridge. About 4 in 10 people in Milton Keynes, Nottingham and Peterborough are non-white. Urban England is becoming more Multicultural.
The Census 2021 finds Asians (9.3%) are the largest ethnic group in England and Wales, followed by Black British, Caribbean or African(4%), mixed or multiple ethnic groups(2.9%) and other ethnic groups (2.1%).
As a leading daily claimed that fewer than half of us now call ourselves Christian, 46.2% to be precise but there are now 37.2% calling themselves people of no faith or ‘No religion’.
This clearly indicates that we are increasingly a more secular country than ever before.
In terms of ethnic faiths, Muslims have the highest growth from 4.9% to 6.5% and Hindu/Sikhs have grown from 2.3% to 2.6%. The other significant religions are Jewish (0.5) and Buddhist (0.5%).
The UK while celebrates different faiths and different occasions such as Xmas, Diwali, Eid, Baisakhi, Navratri, Durga Puja, Hanukkah and several other multicultural occasions as the list keeps on growing with more diverse population; at its core it remains a ‘secular society’ with an appetite to savour and celebrate all flavours.
There are now approximately 743,000 Polish residents and 472,000 Romanian residents in the UK who form the ‘other whites’ ethnically different population of the UK. Italy, Germany and Ireland are the significant ‘other white’ residents across the UK. There are parts of London such as Camden, Hammersmith and Kensington where ‘French’ remains the second most spoken language after English.
Polish, Romanian, Punjabi and Urdu remain the four most popular languages spoken as a main language other than English with Romanian entering the top 10 for the first time. However, the popularity of music and movies from the subcontinent clearly highlights the popularity of Hindi and the other subcontinent languages such as Gujarati, Bengali among the most commonly heard in urban England.
British Asians comprising of Indians (almost half the British Asian population) but also including Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepalese and others such as Sri Lankans are one-tenth of the population.
Indians were allotted the highest no of work permits (80,421) last year as well as the highest number of student visas close to 120,000 and also incidentally highest no of tourist visas – simply making UK a favourite place to work, study and visit and that will reflect in the numbers in the years to come.
The second group closest to this was Nigerian which had 12,862 work permits allotted and similarly a high number of student visas also with a very high number of dependent visas.
