Ethnic diversity in London and other British cities

[Docere]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Wait. Seriously? Irish ancestry doesn't mean identify as ethnically Irish. Jamaica had a pretty large Irish population in the colonial era.



Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_people_in_Jamaica

That's what muppet appears to be saying, yes.

[MolsonExport]

3/4 of the Beatles were part Irish
John Lennon’s Irish ancestors, from both the Lennon and Gildea lines were the furthest north, in Northern Ireland south of Belfast. Paul McCartney’s Mohin ancestors from Tullynamalroe were 50 miles southwest of Lennon’s ancestral home of County Down. George’s French ancestors lived the furthest south along the eastern coast, 150 miles south of Paul’s in Corah, Wexford.

[Docere]

Yes, Liverpool is very Irish. Both Lennon and McCartney were vocally supportive of Irish liberation too.

It was the point of departure for Irish immigrants to North America, and many ended ended staying there.

It even elected an Irish Nationalist MP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._P._O%27Connor

[Docere]

A bit dated, but Liverpool (46%) and Glasgow (29%) are the most Catholic cities in Great Britain; most obviously are of Irish descent.

http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/country/scgb1.html

[muppet]

Originally Posted by Docere

Yes, but I don't see how the West Indian community increases the number with at least some Irish ancestry to 77%.

Should Jamaicans in the Bronx be counted as Irish too?

If they genuinely had Irish ancestry, and wanted to do so on the census then yes - it can overlap. But this would of course be up to them - in the UK many Caribbean communities will do so to strengthen their right/ bond to be in the UK, and British-ise their roots.

And I really can't repeat myself a fourth time, this was in 2001, before London grew by 30% or 2 million, mostly from outside immigration. London today has fallen to about a third:


https://arro.anglia.ac.uk/701128/1/Walter_London.doc

:

The Irish were the largest birthplace group in London from outside Britain until 2001. However the position changed rapidly between 2001 and 2011 when the ranking of the Irish fell sharply to fourth overall by birthplace amongst the incomers, after Indians, Poles and Pakistanis, and ninth by ethnic group. In 2012-13 Irish were placed only eleventh for new migrants seeking National insurance numbers in Britain, many fewer than Poles, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Italians or Portuguese, though of course some young Irish people will have worked in London previously (Kennedy et al 2014: 26-7). But Irish migration to London has a much longer history and Irish experiences offer an unusual opportunity also to explore multi-generational ethnic identities as they persist, hybridise and lose visibility over time.

Tony Murray describes ways in which ‘The Irish have been deeply woven into the fabric of London life for centuries’ (2012:21). Irish settlement in London was recorded in the Middle Ages, becoming more permanent in the Elizabethan period (MacRaild 1999:1). Numbers increased in the eighteenth century, especially in the area of St Giles, part of Holborn, with outer settlements in the east of the city, Whitechapel and Southwark. From the early nineteenth century numbers in the centre continued to expand. Although London is now the prime destination of the emigrants from Ireland, with nearly half the total by 2010-11, before the mid-twentieth century other parts of Britain had larger shares especially North West England and the West of Scotland. In 1841 only 18% of the total share was located in London, falling to 11.8% in 1871 (MacRaild 1999:55).

Far from being a long-settled group with a fading historic background the Irish population is therefore constantly replenished by succeeding ‘waves’, often precipitated by cycles in the Irish economy which have had emigration as a ‘safety valve’ for large numbers of unemployed people (Mac Laughlin 1997). The latest inflow followed the collapse of the Celtic Tiger economy after 2006. This wave shares many of the characteristics of previous flows, but with a much greater concentration of the highly-educated whose careers in Ireland were abruptly stalled in the middle of the 2000s (Irial et al 2013).

As a consequence of the longevity of links with London and the changing social and economic character of migrants, the Irish ‘community’ is very diverse. It includes a great variety of degrees of settledness amongst both migrants and generations of English-born descendants. The Irish have interacted and intersected with many other migrant groups over time, in the process becoming an important part of the ‘mainstream’ as well as the wider multicultural mix.

[Docere]

And even then London was only 60% white British/Irish. The 77% figure is still ridiculous even for that time.

[Crawford]

LOL. Time to head to Little Jamaica in Brooklyn for a pint and collar & cabbage. I'll request "Finnegan's Wake" to the folk musicians.

[Docere]

156,000 of Londoners (1.8%) ticked the the Irish box in the 2021 census, but it's really only the first generation Irish immigrants that identify as Irish on the census. 900,000 ethnic Irish in London seems to be a commonly cited figure, but that may not sure if that includes those with more distant relatives than a grandparent.

London seems to be about 10% Catholic, a majority of whom would be of Irish origin (of course that doesn't capture everyone - not all Irish are Catholic and not all Catholics are Irish - but it's a decent proxy measure in Britain).

[iheartthed]

People seem to be confusing race for ancestry. The average descendant of American slavery (aka African American) alive today has roughly 1/4th European ancestry. Jamaica originated as a slave colony with a fairly similar colonial history to the pre-Revolution colonies of the modern United States, and Jamaica had a disproportionate number of Irish immigrants when it was a slave colony, so it doesn't seem particularly shocking that many Jamaicans have Irish ancestry. The most famous Jamaican in history, who was also a global symbol of the African diaspora (Bob Marley), was half-European himself lol.

[Docere]

Right, but there's some crazy math assuming that every long-time Londoner and every Jamaican must have Irish ancestry somewhere.

[muppet]

ok sure, if you don't want to believe the 77% number, sure. What about the one third number, that started this whole debate in the first place?

Originally Posted by Docere

I really doubt London is 1/3 Irish ancestry, that's a higher % than Boston. But yes the "Irish" box is really first generation Irish.

In Great Britain, Liverpool and Glasgow have the most Irish ancestry but they're descended from 19th century Irish. From the 20th century onward, Irish immigrants mostly went to London.

[Docere]

I doubt it, given that London wasn't particularly Irish in the 19th century and the Irish immigration of the second half of the 20th century, while significant in numbers, occurred when London was huge and becoming more diverse.

I just checked and 283,000 Irish-born in Greater London in 1971 (3.8%). Remarkably the percentage is similar to the mid-19th century when London was a lot smaller. That shows the significance of the postwar Irish immigration.

London did receive more Irish immigrants than any other city in the 19th, yes, but they were a small percentage of the city's population. Much-smaller Liverpool had an Irish community about 80% the size.

As has been pointed out, the Irish immigration of the 19th century went in large numbers to Northern England and Scotland. 20th century immigration was much more skewed towards London.

[muppet]

Once again, it's ancestry not foreign born, and London had it in waves, constantly, whereas the other cities had the one big wave in the 1850s famine.

The second figure 1851 pertains to that bulge (and btw London still took more than the other cities in sheer numbers then) - the rest of the waves London continued to take the majority for 180 years more (not to mention before):



For Britain as a whole, 1 in 10 had at least one Irish grandparent in 2001 and 1/4 claimed ancestry. It's not a stretch that the main recipient destination by far, for centuries, would end up with a third.

[Docere]

The offspring of these Irish immigrants may double the population of Irish descent. Maybe. Irish immigration really began in mass in the 19th century though. It's not like there's 5 or 10x as many native-born people of Irish descent as Irish immigrants at that time.

[muppet]

It all depends on what people identify on in a census, but if you read between the lines we're not just talking about the direct offspring, but the kids of those kids and so on, for the next 180 years. They will absolutely saturate the place with ancestry by then, especially given how many kids they had in the past (5 surviving kids for every woman 1850s), especially Catholics and working class too. The population with ancestry would more than triple with every new generation, even if all immigration stopped, even if there had been zero immigration before. The reality is millions continued to arrive.


If anything by the time of interview generations later, less people might identify than should, and given the painful history between Brits and the Irish, many would have covered up their ancestry at some stage, for it to be forgotten.

[Docere]

London grew from 1 million to 3 million between 1800 and 1860. Part of it was immigration from Ireland and to a lesser extent continental Europe. But most of London's 19th century growth was from internal migration, mostly from southeast England.

https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/stat...-of-london.jsp

[Docere]

Originally Posted by muppet

It all depends on what people identify on in a census, but if you read between the lines we're not just talking about the direct offspring, but the kids of those kids and so on, for the next 180 years. They will absolutely saturate the place with ancestry by then, especially given how many kids they had in the past (5 surviving kids for every woman), especially Catholics and working class too. The generation would rise by 130% with every new one, even if all immigration stopped.

If anything by the time of interview generations later, less people might identify than should, and given the painful history between Brits and the Irish, many would have covered up their ancestry then.

How many people of Dutch ancestry in NYC? Must be in the millions.

[muppet]

Sure, but they would overlap with other ancestries too.


As a reminder in one decade Ireland sent what would have been 5% the population of Britain to Britain, but then followed up with similar numbers for another 70 years, the majority to London.

Oh and I did the maths wrong, the population wouldn't rise by 130%, it would more than triple each time (350,000 women + 350,000 men + 1.75m surviving offspring = 2.45 million with ancestry within one generation, or 10% of the population).

[Docere]

I'd be surprised if even 1% of NYC residents have a colonial Dutch ancestor.

[muppet]

I'd be surprised if 30% of Londoners didn't have an Irish ancestor.