1.5.5 North East England

The North East is the least diverse of England's nine regions. At 96.4%, its proportion of White British residents was greater than any other area at the 2001 census, and it had the smallest proportion of ethnic minority residents in 10 of the 16 census categories.

Out of every 1,000 people, on average: 964 are White British; 13 are Asian; 12 are White non-British; 5 are of mixed race; 2 are Black; 2 are Chinese. In 2001, 2.7% of people living in the North East were born abroad, up from 1.9% in 1991.

In 2001, the North East region had a total population of 2.5 million. This makes it by far the least populous region of England; the East Midlands, which is one place higher in the list, has 4.2 million inhabitants. The North East is the second-smallest in terms of area covered, at 8,592 square kilometers. The population density is 293 people per square kilometer of land.

The most diverse town or city in the region is Newcastle, yet even here only its Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Chinese populations are represented in numbers marginally greater than the average for the whole of England. The whole population: 2,515,442. [5]

Table 1.9 Ethnic groups in North East England

The town of Essington, on the North Sea coast, is, according to the Office for National Statistics, part of the least ethnically diverse local authority in Britain. People from ethnic minority groups make up less than 1.3% of its residents.

The region's black population - less than 4,000 people - is especially small, less than 0.2% of the population. This proportion is less than half that of the next lowest region, the South West. In Essington, at the time of the 2001 census, there were only 18 black people within a population of 94,000; it was alone among England's 376 local authorities in recording zero residents in one of the Office for National Statistics' ethnic categories (the Black Other group).

The North East and London are the only two English regions where the Black African population outnumbers the Black Caribbean one (by three to one, in the case of the North East).

The Asian group is by far the largest of all ethnic minorities in the region, at 33,000 people, or 1.3% of all residents. Following the trend elsewhere in northern England, it is Pakistanis who predominate within this group. A third of all Asians in the region live in Newcastle, where they make up 4.5% of all residents.

Elsewhere, populations tend to be very small; in Durham, for example, which has over 85,000 inhabitants, there are just 62 Pakistanis - one of the lowest proportions anywhere in England. [6]

1.5.6 North West England

Statistically, this region ranks seventh out of the nine English regions in terms of its number of ethnic minority residents. Only the North East and the South West have a greater proportion of people from the White British group (92.1%).

Out of every 1,000 people, on average: 921 are White British; 34 are Asian; 23 people are White non-British; 11 people are of mixed race; 8 people are Black; 8 people are Chinese. Foreign-born people accounted for 4% of the region's population in 2001 - up by one percentage point from 1991. On the other hand, some parts of the region - notably Manchester and the Lancashire towns of Blackburn, Preston, Oldham and Burnley - have much larger ethnic minority populations, particularly within the Asian groups.

The North West region has a total population of 6.7 million, according to the 2001 census. Geographically, it is the sixth largest of the nine English regions, covering an area of 14,165 square kilometers. It has a population density of 475 people per square kilometer; only London has a more concentrated population.

Across the region as a whole, there are nearly a quarter of a million Asian people, ranking it behind only London (over 850,000) and the West Midlands (almost 400,000) among all English regions. In Blackburn, one in five residents are of either Indian or Pakistani descent, while Manchester, Oldham and Preston all have Asian populations either close to, or exceeding, 10% of all residents.

These areas in Lancashire are notable for the fact that their large Indian populations are predominantly Gujarati Muslims; most people of Indian descent living in Britain are Hindus.

The entire North West is home to a quarter of England's 133,000 Indian Muslims, but only one in 20 and one in 50 of the Indian Hindu and Indian Sikh populations respectively.

The English-born Asian population in the North West is mostly descended from people who had arrived in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s, following the partition of the Indian subcontinent after the Second World War. However, the roots of the south Asian population here reach much deeper into history; during the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, workers from the subcontinent were a common sight in the mills and textile factories around the Pennies.

It is interesting to note that the Asian population in the North West is very highly concentrated within the Greater Manchester and Lancashire areas. Even if we move just a little further to the west, to Liverpool - which is only thirty miles from Manchester - or to Stockport, the proportion of Asian residents falls dramatically; barely 1% of Liverpool's population is of Asian origin. The whole population: 6,729,764. [5]

Table 1.10 Ethnic groups in North West England

The North West also ranks third among English regions in the size its Irish population. According to 2001 census figures, nearly 80,000 Irish people live in the region.

Paradoxically, the city which is best-known for its historically large number of Irish residents, Liverpool, actually lags slightly behind the national average in terms of its proportionate share of this group. This is surprising, as in 1861 a quarter of Liverpool's population was Irish-born, and the city is geographically closer to the Irish mainland than any other English city. In this case, however, the bare statistics from the Census are likely to be misleading, as recent research by the Office for National Statistics suggests that many people of Irish origin (but not birth) tended to identify themselves as White British rather than White Irish on census forms; in other words, they tend to 'lose' their parent's ethnic identity much more quickly than people from other (non-white) ethnic groups, such as south Asians.

As in most regions outside London and the West Midlands, black people form a very small minority in the North West: less than one per cent of all residents, or just over 40,000 people.

Nearly half of them (18,000) live in Manchester, which is the only town or city in the region to have a proportion of black residents (4.5%) higher than the national average (2.3%). There are more Black Caribbean's than Black Africans living in the region, by a ratio of about three to two. [6]

1.5.7 South West England

The South West is one of the least ethnically diverse of the nine English regions. Only the North East has a greater proportion of White British residents than the 95.3% in the South West.

Out of every 1,000 people, on average: 953 are White British; 24 are White non-British; 8 are Asian; 7 people are mixed race; 4 people are Black; 3 people are Chinese. According to the 2001 census, 4.4% of the South West's population were born abroad. Although low by national standards, this nonetheless represented an increase of 34% compared to the census in 1991, when only 3.5% were foreign-born.

The South West region had a total population of 4.9 million, according to the 2001 census. It covers an area of 23,829 square kilometers, making it the largest of England's nine regions. It is also the most sparsely populated, with an average of just 207 people living on each square kilometer of land.

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