As concerns are raised about every increasing levels of immigration, we turn our thoughts to the native English and discover that they’re missing from the ethnographic data and lacking enumeration in the 2021 Census. We unpick the data to produce an accurate figure for the English in their own land.
Census Data
English Most Common Race or Ethnicity in 2020 Census, 46.6 million people are recorded as being English in the latest census of American people.
Whoops! Wrong country, but if official statistics are any guide there are more English people recorded as living in the USA than there are English people recorded as living in England. The number of English people recorded as living here is a bit more difficult to dig out. The 2001 UK Census added the ethnic category Irish, but not English, while in Scotland, Scottish and Irish were identified as ethnic categories alongside British, but English was absent. Isn’t that telling?
The Office for National Statistics acknowledges that the English exist as an ethnicity, but doesn’t like to publish data about them. In its England and Wales data the ONS lumps the English, Scots, Northern Irish and Welsh all together and published the “White British“ data. The figure of 44 million is often bandied around for the number of English people here. 44 million is actually the white British population of England and Wales. The official White British population of England is somewhat lower and shown below.
The Population of England was said to be around 57,690,000 in 2023, of which 41,497,000 are White British. That’s 71.9% and down from 74% in the 2021 census. We don’t know how many are English, but that number is less than the 46.6 million ethnically English people living in the USA.
Conclusions
So how many of us are there? I asked Chat GPT;
So 35 million English people in a of UK population of 68 million. So just 51.47% of the population are English
If you’re English you might find that trend slightly disturbing.
What about the English people living elsewhere in the UK?
The short answer is that they don’t count. In Scotland, which has its own census, the government there records the number of Poles living there, and the number of Scottish people living there. It doesn’t record the English. They’re just some of the “other British”, who unlike Asians, can’t be Scottish.
Wales does the same, and so does Northern Ireland. Wales even records “Black Welsh” people living in Wales, but you can’t apparently be English Welsh, because you’re the wrong skin colour. In Northern Ireland it’s just Irish or white.
Civil Service
let’s see how the rest of government does this.
441,000 is too small to draw reliable conclusions about English people?
Armed Forces
The MOD likewise uses the same definitions, although notably it does not record the ethnicity of “white minorities”. However there is interesting data about recruitment, and we can probably infer something from the London recruitment figures:
“Intake by location In the 12 months to 31 March 2024, 78% of the untrained personnel who joined the UK Regular Forces were recruited from England, while 6% were from Scotland, 5% from Wales and 1% from Northern Ireland. 14% of personnel were recruited from the South East region and 12% from the South West, whereas only 5% were recruited from London.” London’s population is nearly nine million out of a total UK population of 67 million, around 14% of UK residents live in London.
Wikipedia
Ethnic groups in the United Kingdom – Wikipedia
The English barely rate a mention in the Wikipedia article on this link, except to say the following “instances of documented and perceived racism, and heavy-handed policing by the native English population, has led to a number of riots, most notably in 1958, 1981, 1985 and 2011.“
