‘Britain will change but not without a struggle’
WHAT THE SHIFT IN DEMOGRAPHICS MEANS FOR DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
THE census shows the challenges ahead for the UK. What is clear is that the country has become more racially diverse.
The contribution of former colonial nations is evident, and the wealth from the south Asian diaspora would fund about half the £190 billion budget for the NHS.
For the Leicester mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, multiculturalism is Britain’s success story.
“It’s an amazing accolade in this very, very diverse city, and we’re proud of that diversity,” he told Eastern Eye.
“What’s become increasingly obvious over the decades, is that Leicester has so much strength from its diversity, and it benefits so much in every aspect of the city’s life. It’s a great badge to wear.”
The Leicester East Independent MP, Claudia Webbe, echoed that message.
“The diversity of Leicester is our strength and something to be celebrated. We are the city where our minorities make up the majority,” she said.
“That is what makes Leicester special, and we are richer for this vibrant exchange of cultures.
“In the previous census data of 2011, over two thirds (68.6 per cent) of my constituency were from a non-white background.
“Nearly half (43.3 per cent) of our residents were born outside of the UK, as opposed to 9.9 per cent nationally.
“Modern-day Leicester East is defined by its diversity.”
Cities such as Birmingham and Bradford also have significant south Asian populations – 30 and 32 per cent, respectively.
More than a quarter (25.5 per cent) of those in Bradford describe themselves as British-Pakistani.
Writing in this week’s Eastern Eye, the director of think-tank British Future, Sunder Katwala, commented, “These census details capture several long-term story of British integration.
“Britain’s ethnic diversity is spreading out geographically.
“The pace of ethnic change is now slower in inner London, as house prices and rents rise, and faster in the suburbs, home counties and beyond.
“Trevor Phillips (former equality chief) calls this pattern of ethnic desegration ‘the reversal of white flight’.
“One in 10 households contain people from different ethnic groups.”
As expected, mixed race population is also rising. “The census records a mixedrace population of 1.8 million (three per cent) up from 1.2 million in 2011 and tripling from the 600,000 in 2001,” Katwala said.
“The census data underestimates this phenomenon. Research finds twice as many people are of mixed ethnic heritage as tick the mixed-race census box, while others of mixed parentage can identify as black, Asian or white British.”
But Katwala cautioned against reading too much into the controversial phenomenon of ‘British identity’.
“A changing census form gives a misleadingly dramatic swing in national identity data. British was listed above English this time in England.
“Half of respondents just ticked the top label on the list – English in 2011, British in 2021. What the two censuses together show is how much those identities overlap for most people.”
Despite the past 60 years of mass immigration from former colonial countries, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Britain remains divided along the fault lines of race and religion.
Saying what religion people practised remained voluntary.
For the first time, under half (46.2 per cent) in England and Wales who answered said they were Christians.
Muslims now number 3.9 million, making up 6.5 per cent.
The number of Hindus went up to one million, or 1.7 per cent of those living in England and Wales, while the 524,140 Sikhs account for 0.9 per cent.
“The increase in Asian and black people to Britain has changed the demographic profiles and capabilities,” said Professor Anshuman Mondal, from the University of East Anglia.
“It’s changed the culture, the habits, whether in business or in other walks of life.
“Late-night shopping nowadays, is quite well accepted, it’s quite mainstream, and you get massive retail chains having late night shopping hours.
“But when we were growing up, it was the Asian coffee shop that introduced late night shopping. That’s part of a big culture change.”
Think too of the changes to the nations taste buds.
At the start of the fourth generation of Asian settlers, chicken tikka masala may be the national dish, and while politicians will have us believe Britain is not institutionally, structurally or systemically racist, that does not mean it is at peace with itself.
“Since the last census, we’ve had a resurgence of racism,” continued Mondal, whose expertise is post-colonial studies.
“We’ve had the default idiom for talking about any form of migration which now is variously coded in a kind of xenophobia and racism, which underlies the experiences of people.
“They’re not uniform – alongside greater acceptance and greater integration of minority ethnic peoples, there’s been a continuity of racial exclusion and resentment.
“The sense that we don’t truly belong here and so on.
“So, it’s a very, very complicated picture which can be traced all the way back to the very difficult, antagonistic, conflicted intimacies of the colonial period.
“Britain doesn’t do very well in trying to acknowledge and wrestle with that long history.It tries to airbrush, it tries to kind of give a very simplistic one-sided picture of a positive narrative about civilising, heathens and so on.” But will things get better? “It won’t change without a struggle, that’s my experience anyway,” Mondal said.
“I don’t think we can rely on it just to happen just like that.
“There is always going to be a sense in which Britishness equals whiteness among a certain group of people.
“That group of people are often very powerful and often have a lot of purchase on the cultural life in this country, on media, on politics.
“So, it will inevitably happen, but it won’t happen easily.”
To highlight his point, the figures for race crimes speak for themselves.
Police in England and Wales recorded a 54 per cent rise in reported race crime during the past five fiscal years, jumping from about 71,200 in 2017-18 to almost 110,000 in 2021-22.
My view is that things are better than two generations ago.
Growing up in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s, we were subjected to “P*** bashing” every day, by gangs of white youths brainwashed by their parents and grandparents that we were ‘smelly invaders’.
Today prejudice is more covert, and it has become fashionable to blame incidents of institutional, structural and system racism on “unconscious bias”.
From a south Asian prime minister, two home secretaries, a black equality minister, and Britain’s first black chancellor to those who wrote last year’s discredited race disparities report, there is a campaign to airbrush the sins of the past and now.
Every week, I am contacted by readers and sources who explain in tears how their complaints of racism are ignored.
In modern parlance, they are gaslighted, but we know it exists. Eastern Eye has campaigned for the government to do much more to tackle racism for years.
The new commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, agrees that his force and officers must do more to stamp out racism.
The former crown prosecutor, Nazir Afzal, carried out an investigation into the London Fire Brigade and found it to be institutionally racist. Afzal said senior people of colour in the BBC sent him messages complaining about racism.
It is all very well institutions saying they are doing their best.
Sadly, with ethnic minority numbers growing, words are no longer enough, and the expectation is one of action to create a harmonious Britain which reflects the impending growing rainbow of nations.
“From my generation, and those younger than me, we’ve always known that this is our home,” Mondal told Eastern Eye.
“We go back to India, and we feel out of place there. We go back to Pakistan and we feel out of place, and we go back to the Caribbean, and we feel a bit out of place.
“So, Britain, for all its tribulations, it’s still our home. We have made this place our home with the thought to be accepted, and that will continue.”