Tales from the Census 1, Mordor, twinned with Babel…

In common with a few British folk of a patriotic persuasion I have started to think of, and indeed refer to, my nation’s capital as Mordor. As the political, arts and entertainment, legal and business centre of the country it is like a combination of New York, L.A., and D.C., with all the varied air headed leftist cosmopolitan attitudes in one big lump. Those attitudes are reflected to a degree in the centres of big cities like Manchester and Birmingham, and in the University cities of Oxford and Cambridge, but London is quite unlike the country as a whole. The cultural and political impact of London is like a lead ball on a rubber sheet, distorting everything.

I’m loath to say it, but increasingly I see London as enemy held territory. Given the wholly London based nature of both the political class and senior civil service it’s no wonder that after more than a decade of allegedly Conservative government you could be forgiven for thinking the UK was run by raving lefties. When it comes to London, where a tourist might see the image on the left, I see the one on the right.

The 2021 census has also shown us that London can no longer really be called an English city, which has only exacerbated the “London effect”.

London has long been a cosmopolitan city; I grew up in an especially mixed area of west London and have no problem with people of different colours, faiths, and cultures, whether born here or abroad. It’s not a question of “some of my best friends are…” none of my best friends are black or Asian, but my two oldest friends are Sikhs, my first kiss was with a Sikh lass, my second proper relationship was with a Hindu born and raised in Delhi. I have worked perfectly happily with folk from India, Pakistan, China, Africa, and the Caribbean, as well as from Europe and across the English-speaking world. As is often stated, there are many benefits to immigration, and I welcome people coming legally to live in the UK to build their lives and become part of Britain’s ongoing story.

I should also say that I am well aware that many folk here whose ancestors came in the last few decades from India, Pakistan, the Caribbean, and Africa who are culturally as British as I am and who love Britain just as much. However, the UK is not the USA. The nations that make up the United Kingdom do have their own ethnicities, contrary to the assertions of the Woke, there is such a thing as an ethnic Englishman. England benefits from immigration to a degree, but there comes a point when immigration grows to a point that it simply stops being England. 

In the last few decades London has gone from being an overwhelmingly British and English city with a good mixture of folk of different origins, to a totally mixed city where the ethnic English are actually in a minority and are merely the largest single ethnic group.

In the 1971 census (the first after I was born) 87% of Greater London’s population were “White British”, a category that includes Welsh, Scots, and Northern Irish folk as well as English. In the first census of this century this had gone down to 59.79%. In 2011 it was 44.89% and we learned a few weeks ago that in 2021 it was 36.8%. The average across the London boroughs of people born outside the UK is just over 40%.

So, in half a century the population of London that has deep roots in these islands has gone from nearly nine out ten people, to barely more than one in three. Here are some maps of the demographics of the thirty-two London boroughs and the City of London that make up Greater London.

This map shows those the percentage of those identifying as “White British”. This category includes Welsh, Scots, and Northern Irish as well as ethnically English. On this one I’ve put the percentage for each borough, in the others I’ve put the highest and lowest figures. 

 

The Moslem population across London is just shy of 15%, but as you can see, there are distinct concentrations. In three boroughs the Moslem population is at or over one third, but again, within those boroughs there are neighbourhoods that are well over 80%. 

Stats are crude, and people don’t fall easily into categories. There are plenty of good, decent, patriotic British people of various colours, cultures and faiths, but the larger and deeper the areas grow that are only British in a barely legal and geographic sense the less likely folk in those areas are to integrate.

I’ll share a story from about fifteen years ago when I was living in the borough of Hounslow (in the first map it’s the darkish one in the southwest, with 28.4% white British). I was on a crowded bus going home from work one chilly, rainy evening. I got talking with the young chap sitting next to me, he was Czech and had been in the country a couple of years. After a while he asked me where I was from, I replied that I was from Southall, about six or so miles north of where we were. He was surprised, and said “You were born here? You’re English?”. He encountered so few Englishmen that he could not tell when he was speaking to one. Huge areas of London are like that today. As London goes, so goes the country. In the next post I’ll share some of the stats on England as a whole.