Of the 56.1 million people who lived in England and Wales in 2011, 30.8 million stated that their ethnicity was White and their religion Christian on the Census form – 55.0% of the population. The proportion in the rest of the UK was even higher. A further 13.2 million (23.5%) said they were of White ethnicity and had no religion, and another 3.5 million (6.2%) said they were White and would not state a religion, leaving 15.3% of the population, or two in every 13 people, either White and of another religion, or not White.

Minorities have traditionally been defined in Britain as ‘people not of White ethnicity, or adherents to a religion other than Christianity’. In Scotland and Northern Ireland many different kinds of Christianity are distinguished, which will have an effect on the overall numbers of people saying they are Christian, and so they are not included in the graph shown opposite. In Wales, being Welsh-speaking is another way in which a significant proportion of the population may be considered part of a minority and so, towards the end of this chapter, we look at languages spoken as another form of identity and affiliation. However, what matters most is to first recognise just how dominant the dominant groups are, which includes people in the UK who can only speak English.

By ethnicity the proportion of the population of the whole of the UK describing themselves as White has been falling in recent years and between the Censuses, and fell in 2012 to 89.48%, in 2013 to 89.25%, and in 2014 to 89.22% of the entire population. A larger proportion of very elderly people are White than the proportion of the population as a whole, and so simply by ageing, the population partly caused the proportion who are not White to rise by 2014 to 10.75% of the entire population. Just as Christians are divided up, so too is the White ethnic group, into White English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and White Other.