An altered state
by Melanie Phillips:
There is no such thing as a multicultural society.
The findings of the 2021 census for England and Wales reveal a country that is becoming unrecognisable before our very eyes.
Britain’s two largest cities, London and Birmingham, are now minority white British. Since the last census ten years ago, the white British population of Birmingham has fallen from 52 per cent to 43 per cent. In London, the number has fallen from 45 per cent to 37 per cent.
While more than 80 per cent in England and Wales still identify their ethnic group as white, the numbers have fallen from 86 per cent to 81.7 per cent. And while this trajectory shows a downward trend, minorities are rising. The second most common ethnic group after “white” was “Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh” at 9.3 per cent, up from 7.5 per cent in 2011. The number of people identifying their ethnic group as “Other” rose to 1.6 per cent from 0.6 per cent. And those identifying as “Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African” also increased to 2.5 per cent from 1.8 per cent.
No less momentous is the related watershed that has now been reached in the continuing decline of Christianity within the United Kingdom. For the first time, fewer than half the population of England and Wales identifies as Christian, with the number describing themselves as “non-religious” almost trebling since the millennium. While self-described Christians have declined by 17 per cent, there has been a 43 per cent rise in the number of people who say they follow Islam.
The significance of these changes does not lie in skin colour but in the fact that minority cultures are increasing while the majority culture is waning. Statisticians have welcomed this as the development of a “multicultural society”. But this is an oxymoron. While a multi-ethnic society is possible, there is no such thing as a “multicultural society”.
A society only exists where its inhabitants regard themselves as bound together by a culture composed of language, religion, law, literature, traditions, customs and so on expressed through civic and political ideals embedded in the historic development of that culture. Different ethnicities can sign up to the norms established by that culture, even if they are newcomers who didn’t share in its development. But there has to be an identifiable overarching culture to which they can sign up.
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