"Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood." — Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
Guess what came through my letter box... my census form. Bloody hell! It’s a biggie...pages and pages of intrusive questions about who I am, what I do, and where on earth I came from. For my overseas readers this is something we in the UK have to do once every ten years. We the public are asked questions about our jobs, our health, our education and ethnic background. The form is compulsory, and carries a fine of up to £1,000 for failing to do it. Oh and if you wanna rebel you can’t...someone will come and knock on your door and do it with you there and then. So we gotta do it.
Actually I don’t mind ... it’s a snap shot of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland taken on March 2011. We – everyone who lives here - will be in the picture. It’s like seeing exactly who is on the bus. Remember when you were at school and the teacher stands at the front and makes you all put your hands up before the bus leaves? It’s like that I guess... the government just is counting who is on the bus.
However there are a lot a people who are REALLY anti doing the form. They feel it is intrusive and not particularly accurate. They are busy doing a report which could recommend scrapping the exercise - they really cannot accept that getting everyone to stop and say where they are from why they are here and what are they doing can possibly be of any use in the modern world.
I have a feeling what rattles them the most. It’s the fact that numbers don’t really lie. You can’t really spin numbers, if there are 20 people on the bus... then there are 20 people on the bus. Not much you can do about that fact.
Of course the data collected will not be 100% accurate. There may well be someone hiding on the bus who doesn’t put their hand up. There may be someone on the bus who puts up two hands. But at the end of the day most people will give accurate information. Most of us when asked will raise one hand...and own up to what ever teacher asks.
Thus the census remains the most detailed survey to be carried out and, in my humble opinion, completing it is a civic duty to help keep accurate population records.
I don't believe for a moment that these records are useless to the average citizen. The fact that it is a public record means we can access our nations census's when ever we like. The 1991 census has proved it’s worth over and over again to me... Especially when harassing my local council to provide services... but also socially. Even very old census's came in useful... for example, when I interviewed Amy the Racist (who has a distorted idea of the ethnic mix of this little island of ours). So YES I’m rather pro filling my census in (and rather delight in contributing to supporting facts of an argument between my countrymen of the future.)
Finding out who actually lived here can be done without census's of course. Early records (esp pre-ice age ones) could be ascertained from spear heads and broken pots of course BUT the argument was on much sounder ground when we had proper data (ie census’s) to look at.
Any one who lives in the UK will know loads about the effects of migration... we are after all a “French colony that didn’t work out”. (A humorous reference to the Norman conquest of the 11th Century). We may not speak French as a result of that but we owe a lot of modern government, culture, and language to the ideas the Normans brought. (And we do say a few French words...like.... ummm.... Garage. ... there!)
This island of ours has benefited muchly from those who rightly or wrongly have arrived on its shores and neglected to go home.
Despite having been populated by folk who were very casual with their spears (loads of them turned up in Suffolk and date back to 700,000 BC), the ice age kind of wiped out any human life here. In fact no one lived here for 5,000 years but about 14,700 years ago nomadic people whose wanderings started in the places we now call The Middle East and North Africa (which weren’t quite as nippy in the ice age), wandered up here. Unfortunately the side effect of us becoming a bit warmer was rising sea levels due to all that ice melting. So in about 6500 BC this land became separated from continental Europe and our nomadic visitors were kind of stuck here.
Mind you... where there is a will there is a way... because by The Mesolithic era (4000 BC), some folk had made boats... as new people turned up and had different tools which the nomadic people observed and learnt from. These new folk were thought to be from what is now Spain and France and man they had some fancy new ways to go with the penchant for travel. Before long four of the newcomers activities had become the norm, boat building, domestication of animals, arable farming and pottery. Oh boy was pottery big. (However it does seem the Mesolithic people were as slap dash with their pots as the pre ice agers were their spears... Cornwall is littered with them!)
Guess who turned up next? Yep... the Germans. Actually that’s not entirely true. The Bell-Becker people who turned up here in 3000BC came from the bit of Europe we’d now call Germany, Holland and Denmark... but also hung out in Spain and France. But guess what they brought with them? No... not pottery classes or ship building sessions... this lot turned up with horses. We’d not seen them before and a love affair with these big old creatures began. They also turned up with a process that would prove jolly useful as it produced a metal called bronze. Learning from the new arrivals meant that suddenly things could be manufactured. Now this was great... but you know what was better.... they turned up with booze. We LEARNT A LOT from the Bell-Beckers and were so happy to have them come stay, but all that horse riding and metal work under the influence of alcohol meant this happy period passed in a blur.
Because while all this was going on there were some folk who sneaked in under the radar... or should we say...walked right in and settled down. It’s thought they came from what is now known as the Iranian plateau, and South Asia. These were the Goidelic folk. They were much more careful with their pots, spears and belongings so archaeologist have a hard time pinning down when exactly they turned up... but their descendants are known as The Celts. Sometimes people leave behind something more tangible. It is often pointed out that if you doubt they were here you’ll probably be doing so in one of the spin offs from the language they left behind:, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Marathi, French, Italian, Punjabi, being just a few. One thing is for sure.... by the time the Roman’s turned up practically everyone was talking Goidelic, riding horses, making bronze brooches and getting very very drunk.
55 BC was the first go the Roman army (from what is now known as Italy) had at taking over the gaff. They got the gig being organised and structured as they were and held on tight for almost 500 years (430AD)... so it was a good innings. The Romans never really intended to stay, they just wanted to run the place for a while. They even succeed in fencing the more unruly Celts in because they really objected to being ruled. The Romans never got a chance to sort them out because problems at home meant the occupation gig was up. Apart from being as crap with their pots and coins as to leave a trail behind them... they left a few cultural changes we still use today (with the odd modern tweak to bring them up to date). These include sensible things like brick architecture, aquaducts, calendars, laws, legal systems, and census... but also include under floor heating, public baths and shopping malls which can all trace their origins back to those organised army people from Italy.
The trouble with the Italian’s going home was that there was nothing to stop the Germans turning up again. And they did. In fact the ones who came from Angeln (now would be Upper Germany) did so in such numbers that they reportedly left their own country empty. The lot that turned up from Saxony (what is now Holland and lower Germany) and the Jute people (what is now Denmark) were a bit more restrained. These were old school migrants. Unlike the Romans (who to be fair did hang around a while) they had no intent to go home. This was not an army of occupation – this was mass immigration.
After a while the word was out that what is now the UK was the it place for an up and coming migrant... where the Angeln’s , Saxon’s, and Jute’s went... the Franks and the Frisians followed. The Frisians were particularly exotic bringing platinum blonde hair to these shores for the first time. Four hundred years went by in a flash and most occupants of the UK could name a relative who had a bit of either Angeln or Saxon in them.
Well... guess what. 789AD saw a few more Danes turn up. BUT this lot came in boats to raid the gaff. They weren’t immigrating - they stole, killed and burned villages. Yep the Vikings were coming. First the Danes, then the Norwegians. And every time from that point onwards if Blighty started to be passé there would be renewed Scandinavian interest. BUT. What sword and fire cannot be quelled by a bit of feminine charm. All that racial mixing had resulted in some fine looking women. Vikings start to fall for the local lasses... and the next thing they knew they were married and settling down to trading rather than going out on the rob. And it all would have worked out well... until the French decided they needed a new colony in 1066.
So by now, the German Settlers (now called the The Anglo-Saxons) were kind of running the gaff as they were the majority and put this bloke Edward in charge. It was cool job description, wealth beyond your wildest dreams, be the boss... and have a few kids. And Eddie to his credit.. did 2/3. However he kind of died without doing the having kids parts. Which in retrospect I’m sure he’ll agree was rather a bit of an oversight that he’d rethink if he could do it all again. He did his best to patch things up...he got his sister’s husband Harold to sub for him. And this would have been fine IF Eddie hadn’t also mentioned to his distant cousin William in France that he could sub for him if he didn’t have any kids by the time he popped his clogs.
Hastings. Arrows. Eyeballs....You kind of know what happened there. (And there was us thinking only the Vikings sorted things out violently).
SO. The rule book is became French. Which wasn’t too much of a problem as a small number of Normans were living here anyway and suggested that the best way to deal with the locals was to get in bed with them. Now this wasn’t going to be too much like hard work. The Anglo-Saxons and the Normans shared the same religious beliefs and a certain common culture. The Anglo Saxons liked adding 'de’ in front of their names to sound posh like the Normans and the Normans liked growing their hair long hand having moustaches to look hard like the Anglo-Saxons. It really wasn’t gonna be too bad as long as everyone agreed that talking French and eating reptiles was not going to work.
So a new version of the language was created over time, as the two populations intermarried and merged. Reptiles went off the menu...and no one has invaded the UK mainland since. Basically because they saw what happened to the French. They kind of stopped being French. Normans began to think of themselves as Anglo-Normans... which was such a mouthful no one could be bothered with that for long. So by 1400 everyone decided to call themselves by the part of the kingdom they resided in ... and thus the idea of creating a French colony didn’t work out that way at all. In fact the son’s of the Norman conquest were fighting AGAINST France by 1337!
So... the we’re only in the 14th century and the UK has so far has been made up of people from what is now North Africa, The Middle East, France, Spain, Germany, Iran, South Asia, Italy Holland, and Denmark. Then there were more Danes, some Norwegians, and some misguided French Colonists and of course the Germans kept turning up in different guises every few hundred years. Amy the racist would be screaming “Surely there is no room for any one else!!!” But Amy...the people YOU are descended from haven’t even got here yet.
You see a key thing about the Normans settling in so well was having the same religion. However, to fund a successful take over bid sometimes takes outside coffers... and one of those sources were Dutch financiers who originated from what is now the Middle East. These people followed the religion called Judaism. These people were decidedly conspicuous by appearance, language and religion and were not having the best of times in Holland. Part of the benefit of backing the winning side in the battle for the UK meant the path was smoother for migration. These migrants were not any less conspicuous in the UK though. Not that that stopped them coming. By 1348, the numbers here were estimated to be between 4.5-6 million of them. A popular target for blame and purges... the numbers fluctuated until Russia went mental and started killing Jews in 1882. The UK offered sanctuary. It was a migration unique in British history never had there been non-Christian refugees in such numbers. It was something the UK unfortunately had to repeat when such madness broke out again in the 20thCentury. Although an industrious people they found the price of sanctuary often meant the ruthless exploitation of the Jews finances by the crown .However socially they proved even more priceless as they introduced the idea of humour, music, and food as powerful parts of cultural self-assertion. The Ironic Eccentric had arrived.
An ethnic group living mostly in Europe, who traced their origins to South Asia arrived in about 1440 and were known to the populace here as “The Gypsies”. The English term Gypsy originates from the Greek word for "Egyptian". Although largely Christian, a mythology built about around these people having ways that were not of the Church of England. Queen Elizabeth I wasn’t too chuffed so she tried to kick them out with her 1562 Egyptians Act. They (like Liz's attempts to boot them out) went nowhere. Today these people are known as Romani. Cultural exposure has resulted in a way of life that fascinates most people.. and it’s not just the guitar work and flouncy skirts. This may be down to the mysterious ambiguity that surrounds their world, but it's more likely to simply be because they travel extensively and exist on the edges of society. This has become the Gap Year which gives us non Romani’s the chance to have a capsule Romani experience.
One set of people Elizabeth I did sanction staying in the UK were the “Blackamores”. From 1555 onwards it was quite the thing to have at least one. “Blackamores” in Elizabethan speak were people who could trace their origin to Sub-Saharan Africa. (In non PC speak those originating from what is now West Africa and later refers to descendants of slaves having been ‘bred’ in what is now known as the Caribbean.) 12 million persons were removed from Sub-Saharan Africa during this process - this is now known as The Atlantic Slavery Trade. But what is sometimes forgotten was that not all were shipped to the New World, Black slaves were attendants to sea captains and ex-colonial officials as well as society people, traders, plantation owners and military personnel. The knock on effect being that by the height of the slave trade (1790) the free population of “Blackamores” in the UK ran at just under a million. The contribution of which we will revisit in a moment.
Like Jews, Slaves and Gypsies were not enough, having parted company with the Church of Rome, Our Liz had a lot of immigration issues to deal with. England became a haven for persecuted followers of the new protestant faiths (of which the Church of England was one). So from the 1560’s on wards Huguenots started shipping up on these shores... by 1750 over 5 million had either passed though or settled. Of course they suffered accusations levelled at immigrants from time immemorial -that their presence threatened jobs, standards of housing, public order, morality and hygiene and even that they ate strange foods! Huguenots remain a recognisable minority in British society (Calvinists), making their presence felt in banking, commerce, industry, the book trade, the arts, the army, acting and in teaching.
Seems we on this island never tire of a German influx. In 1693 it was all about Palatines from the German Palatinate (now known as the Rhine Land). These people were largely unskilled and destitute although many settled in the UK (London, Bolton and Liverpool primarily) others continued to Ireland, the Caribbean and America. But the ones who stayed had a knock on effect on the British Wine industry bringing knowledge from their ancestors who came from south west corner of Germany into France.
In fact, Europe remains the biggest source of migrants to the UK what ever century you pick. The 1871 census recorded the overall European-born population made up a third of the 33 million UK residents. The 1991 census had almost the same percentage of residents being born in other European Countries even though the population had swollen to 59 million UK residents.
But not everyone ends up migrating here because of nomadic wanderings, love, war, conquest, slavery or persecution.
Sometimes migration happens because of good old fashioned economic reasons. Trade is a favourite way of introducing countries to each other and presenting the possibility of migrating else where.
Most of the early Chinese in the UK arrived as seamen, after the treaties of Nanking in 1842 and Peking in 1860 opened up China to British trade. Clearly life here wasn’t too tempting as their population in Britain remained very small in 1871 it was recorded as 207. Distinct in physical appearance and belief in a different philosophical system this group tended to be more widespread and decentralised. By 1911 just 1,319 people of Chinese descent were living in the UK. It seemed there would never really be a real Chinese community in the UK. Today the British Chinese community is the second largest in Europe just after France. Their influence initially revolutionised the catering, gaming and housekeeping industries and went on to bring a far eastern perspective to many other areas of business and social processes. The most recent census (1991) show they now represent 0.7% of the UK population (just over 430,000)
Assimilating people of different religions has never been an easy process. With 4 major religious groups which do not have Judo-Christian origin, it has been a slow process since the UK started trading cotton, silk, indigo dye, saltpetre, tea, and opium with the sub continent in 1599. As recently as 1939 the South Asian population of the City of Birmingham was estimated at just 100 -- that is, merely one hundred souls! Having practically single handedly transformed the way the British approach retail, their influence also can be seen in medicine, catering and micro-business. These days people of South Asian origin represents 4% of the UK population( 2,331,423).
So what happened to those West African’s and Caribbean’s after slavery ended in 1833? Did their numbers get much bigger than the million that were wandering about in 1790 after the need for attendants for sea captains and ex-colonial officials, and plantation owners ran out?
Well.....This is very much the story of two completely different continents coming to live in a third. So here goes. The population of 900,000 people of that origin took a blow during the late 1800’s which was the heyday of ‘scientific racism’. It was ‘scientifically’ believed at that time that as a race they were inferior and should be left to die out. Of course science proved such reports to be bogus. However, the ex-slave population did show an extremely high rate of mixed-race relationships, and were well on their way to becoming the first UK ethnic group to 'disappear’ – numbers dropped to under 300,000.
However but by the end of that century the very people that were once shipped to the new world were shipping themselves back to the mother country to work in the Docks of London, Liverpool and Cardiff. By 1881 Victorian society reported a population of 802, 439. This increased again in the following century when merchant seaman and soldiers came for WWI and again around WWII as wartime workers, merchant seaman, and servicemen for the army, navy, and air forces came for the war effort. Following the Wars, mass immigration occurred primarily from the Caribbean. Caribbean immigration was effectively stemmed in 1972 and since the 1980s, the majority of black immigrants into the country have come directly from West Africa, in particular, Nigeria and Ghana. Together these communities have impacted upon food, the arts, media, sport and medicine and infrastrcuture. 1991 Census show this population as 1,148,738 which represents 2% of the UK’s population.
So final tally before I settle down to put my mark on my 2011 census form.
Since the ice age defrosted it seems that my little island is made up of... in order... large numbers of people from North Africa, The Middle East, France, Spain, Germany, Iran, South Asia, Italy, Holland, Denmark and Norway, throw in some Jews, Romanis, West Africans, Caribbeans, Huguenots, German Palatines, Chinese and South Asians into the mix. All of these people have ties to this place going back anything from a couple of millennia to a couple of centuries.
Which is why I’m looking forward to doing my 20111 census form. Yes it is intrusive... but when it is done we’ll know who is on the bus. It may scare Amy but I’m looking forward to the stories of who ever turned up next. They say there is a strong possibility that when they finish counting whose on the bus our total population may have gone over the 60million mark!
On one little Island??? Amy the racist would be screaming “Surely there is no room for any one else!!!”
To which I say... as long as they contribute something entertaining, useful or profitable and we’re not so crowded that anyone is getting their toes wet... “Vive la différence.”
Ha... look at that... a FRENCH PHRASE!
Maybe this French Colony worked out after all!
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