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PEOPLE
You may be
surprised to discover how ethnically diverse British society is,
especially in the cities. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, many
thousands of people emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean, the
South Asian sub-continent, Uganda and South-East Asia. Ethnic
minority groups now represent about seven per cent of the
British population, including:
• over 1 million people of Caribbean or African descent
• over 1 million people of Indian descent
• over 1 million people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent.
In addition, there are significant numbers of people from China,
Italy, Cyprus, Poland, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and
Canada living in the UK.
Languages
The most widely spoken Asian language in the UK is Punjabi,
followed by Urdu, Bengali and Gujarati. The main Chinese
dialects spoken in the UK are Cantonese and Mandarin. Celtic
languages were once widely spoken in Ireland, Scotland, Wales
and some parts of England. Three of these languages are still
spoken in some areas:
• more than 500,000 people in Wales speak Welsh, and some radio
and television programmes are broadcast in Welsh
• Gaelic is spoken by about 70,000 people in Scotland, mostly in
the islands of the Hebrides off the west coast.
• in Northern Ireland, about 142,000 people speak Irish Gaelic.
Religious diversity
The UK is
nominally a Christian country with over 70 per cent of the
population identifying themselves as Christians. The Anglican
Church is legally recognized as the official church of the
State, and about half of the Christian population consider
themselves to be Anglicans.
Everyone in the UK has
the right to religious freedom, and, in addition to the various
forms of Christianity, many different religions are practised.
The largest religious communities include:
• the Muslim community, a population of about 1.6 million
• the Hindu community, about 560,000 people
• the Sikh community, about 350,000 people
• the Jewish community, about 270,000 people. |
