Ethnic and National Minorities
Chapter Three
Population
Population
| What is a Cockney? Traditionally, a true Cockney is anybody born within the sound of Bow bells (the bells of the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in the city of London). In fact, the term is commonly used to denote people who come from a wider area of the innermost eastern suburbs of London and also an adjoining area south of the Thames. ‘Cockney’ is also used to describe a strong London accent and, like any such local accent, is associated with working-class origins. A notable feature of Cockney speech is rhyming slang, by which, for example, ‘wife’ is referred to as ‘trouble and strife’, and ‘stairs’ as ‘apples and pears’ (usually shortened to ‘apples’). Some rhyming slang has passed into general informal British usage: examples are ‘use your loaf’ meaning ‘think’ (from ‘loaf of bread’ meaning ‘head’) and ‘have a butcher’s’ meaning ‘have a look’ (from ‘butcher’s hook’ meaning ‘look’). |
The total population of the UK is over 63 mln people.
The UK is inhabited by the English – 48,1 mln (80% or about 83%); the Scots – 5,7 mln (8%); Welsh – 3,1 mln (~5%); Irish – 1,9 mln (2,7%). Among other nationalities there are Gaels, Jews, Poles, Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, Indians, Pakistanis and from African countries.
1. English is the official language of the country; besides standard English there are many social and region dialects. A well known example is cockney of East London.
English is spoken in all the 4th parts of the UK. Wales however is bilingual – Welsh is the first language of the majority of the population in most western countries. A Welsh language is survival of ancient Gaelic – one of the Europe oldest languages. In 1967 the Welsh language Act was passed to affirm the equal legality of Welsh and English at the Administration of Justice.
The Gaelic language still exists as Gaelic in Scotland and Ireland. In Scotland some 100.000 people mainly in the Highland and Western regions are able to speak the Scottish form of Gaelic. A few families in Northern Ireland speak the Irish form of Gaelic.
French is the official language of Jersey (Channel Islands) and of Isle of Man. It’s used for ceremonial and official procedures. Both English and French are used on courts.
Migration waves
From the beginning of the 15th century until the 20th century the balance of migration was outward due to colonial expansions.
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During the 19th century over 20 mln left Britain for destinations outside Europe. Mainly in the common but since 1930 the balance of migration was inward. Many immigrants began to return. The greatest wave of immigration was in 1950-60s because many companies needed people from unskilled or semiskilled jobs. There were a lot of people from Caribbean Islands, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Hong Kong. Then the government introduced the Commonwealth Immigration Act 1962 which gave it power to restrict the number of people from Commonwealth especially from Irish Republic. Another Act was passed in 1968 and then in 1971. The last reduced the number of people allowed to stay in Britain. Before coming to power Margaret Thatcher promised that a conservative government would finally see amend to immigration. During the 1980s her government restricted it further and ended the right of anyone born in Britain to British citizenship.
More than 36000 Londoners described himself as Black British instead of Africans or Afrocaribbean. But Britain hasn’t solved this problem – the number of people asking to settle in Britain – is rising the minorities are concentrated in the cities. There are already several thousand non white British mainly in ports like Liverpool, Bristol and Cardiff. In the mid 1960s the government introduced the first of three Race Relationship Act in order to illuminate racial discrimination. Other government promised absolute equality for non white British citizens but the promise has remained unfulfilled.
A relatively new phenomenon is islamisation of some British Asian youths. A visible percentage of the second generation of British Pakistanis become more religious than their parents, adopting Islamic dress and habits. Some of them fail to understand Britain’s multiculturalism as an asset of a democratic society.
Demographic trends
| Population of major cities | |
| London Birmingham Leeds Glasgow Sheffield Bradford Liverpool Edinburgh Manchester Bristol | 7,074,000 1,020,000 726,000 616,000 530,000 483,000 467,000 448,000 430,000 399,000 |
The population density is well above the European Union average. 2.England is the most densely populated, with 373 people per sq km, and Scotland the least, with 67 people per sq km. The great majority of people are concentrated in towns and cities, although there has been a trend, especially in the capital London, for people to move away from congested urban centres into the suburbs.
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2.In 2014 there were 776,000 live births in Britain, compared with 570,000 deaths. The birth rate is relatively low at 12.3 live births per 1,000 population. This in part due to a trend towards later marriage and towards postponing births.
Life expectancy for men in Britain is about 74 years and for women 79 years (compared with 49 years for men and 52 years for women at the start of the century). The general death rate is 10.4 per 1,000 of the population. There has been a decline in mortality at most ages, particularly among children, reflecting better nutrition, rising living standards, medical advances and improved health measures, wider education and the smaller size of families.
Britain has one of the highest marriage and divorce rates in the European Union. There are 309,000 marriages each year in Britain, of which about 40 per cent are remarriages of one or both parties. Of the population ages 16 or over in England and Wales 55 per cent are married, 28 per cent are single, 9 per cent are widowed and 8 per cent are divorced. The average age for first marriages in England and Wales is now 29 for men and 27 for women. In England and Wales there are about 14 divorces for every 1,000 married couples. The average age of spouses at the time of divorce is now about 38 for men and just over 35 for women. Divorce rates are lower in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
In common with many other Western European countries, there has been an increase in cohabitation (unmarried couples living together) in Britain. About 14 per cent of non-married men and women aged 16 and over in Great Britain are cohabiting. There is some evidence of a growing number of stable non-married relationships. Over half of all births outside marriage (which account for over one third of live births in Britain) are registered by both parents giving a single address as their place of residence.
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One of the most significant changes in the age structure of Britain's population over the last 30 years has been the increasing proportion of people over retirement age (65 for men and 60 for women) - some 11 million today, and their numbers continued to grow. This has important implications for social services provision into the next century.
Age and Sex Structure
The total population has remained relatively stable over the last decade. There is ratio of about 2.105 females to every 100 males. There are about 5 per cent more male than female births every year. The proportion of young people aged under 16 fell steadily in the early 1980s, but numbers in this age group have increased slightly in the last two decades. The proportion of elderly people, especially those aged 85 and over, has continued to increase. The age distribution of the British population in mid-1990 was estimated as follows:
· 20.2 per cent under 16 years of age;
· 64.1 per cent between 16 and 64 years; and
· 15.7 per cent aged 65 and over.
Ethnic and National Minorities
For centuries people from overseas have settled in Britain, to escape political or religious persecution or in search of better economic opportunities.
The Irish have long formed a large section of the population. Jewish refugees who came to Britain towards the end of the nineteenth century and in the 1930s were followed by other European refugees after 1945. Substantial immigration from the Caribbean and the South Asia subcontinent dates principally from the 1950s and 1960s. There are also groups from the United States and Canada, as well as Australians, Chinese, Greek and Turkish Cypriots, Italians and Spaniards. More recently people from Latin America, Indo-China and Sri Lanka have sought refuge in Britain.
In 1989-91, according to the results of a sample survey, the average ethnic minority population of Great Britain numbered about 2.7 million (some 4.9 per cent of the total population), of whom 46 per cent were born in Britain. Just over half of the ethnic minority population was of Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin; less than one-fifth was of Afro-Caribbean ethnic origin; and over one in ten was of mixed ethnic origin.
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