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Ethnic groups

Historically, indigenous British people were thought to be descended from the various ethnic groups that settled there before the 11th century: the Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Norse and the Normans. Welsh people could be the oldest ethnic group in the UK.^[268] Recent genetic studies have shown that more than 50 percent of England's gene pool contains Germanic Y chromosomes,^[269] though other recent genetic analysis indicates that "about 75 per cent of the traceable ancestors of the modern British population had arrived in the British isles by about 6,200 years ago, at the start of the British Neolithic or Stone Age", and that the British broadly share a common ancestry with the Basque people.^{[270][271][272]}

The UK has a history of small-scale non-white immigration, with Liverpool having the oldest Black population in the country dating back to at least the 1730s,^[273] and the oldest Chinese community in Europe, dating to the arrival of Chinese seamen in the 19th century.^[274] In 1950 there were probably fewer than 20,000 non-white residents in Britain, almost all born overseas.^[275]

Since 1945 substantial immigration from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia has been a legacy of ties forged by the British Empire. Migration from new EU member states in Central and Eastern Europe since 2004 has resulted in growth in these population groups but, as of 2008, the trend is reversing and many of these migrants are returning home, leaving the size of these groups unknown.^[276] As of 2001, 92.1% of the population identified themselves as White, leaving 7.9%^[277] of the UK population identifying themselves as mixed race or of an ethnic minority.

Ethnic diversity varies significantly across the UK. 30.4% of London's population^[278] and 37.4% of Leicester's^[279] was estimated to be non-white as of June 2005, whereas less than 5% of the populations of North East England, Wales and the South West were from ethnic minorities according to the 2001 census.^[280] As of 2011, 26.5% of primary and 22.2% of secondary pupils at state schools in England are members of an ethnic minority.^[281]

In 2009,^[282] official estimates have shown that the non-white British population of England and Wales has increased by 38% from 6.6 million in 2001 to 9.1 million in 2009. The fastest growing group is the mixed-race population that doubled from 672,000 in 2001 to 986,600 in 2009. Also in the same period, a decrease of 36,000 white British people was recorded.^[283]