The UK can claim to be one of the most multi-cultural places on earth, with almost every race and religion represented by different international communities across the country.

And while London is famous for being the largest centre of multi-ethnic diversity anywhere in the world, the rest of the UK also has its own share of numerous different cultures working and living together.

 

Immigrant Communities

Some of these communities stretch back over hundreds of years, such as the 8,000 strong Somali community in Cardiff, who first arrived as far back as 1880. Others, such as the 5,000 strong Portuguese population of Boston, Lincolnshire, began arriving just 12 years ago, in the mid-1990s.

Like many immigrant communities most of these people came to the UK for purely economic reasons, but what started as a temporary migration to find work soon turned into permanent settlement as the new arrivals bought houses, got married and started raising children.

For example, a sizeable Spanish community first arrived in London during the Spanish Civil War, in 1936, originally just to escape the conflict in that country. But visit Portobello Road, West London, in 2008 and you will find a thriving Spanish school and lots of Spanish supermarkets and tapas bars, selling everything that a homesick Spanish visitor could wish for.

Head out of London towards Bedford and you will discover a large community of 14,000 Italians, who all came over to work in the post-war construction boom back in the 1950s and never looked back. You can still find many of the original community, now in their 80s, meeting up to dance, play cards and socialise once a week at the local town hall.

There are simply an enormous number of different international communities around the UK. Woking, Surrey, has perhaps the oldest Pakistani community in Britain, dating back to the late 1950s, while even the Isle of Scilly off the Cornish coast is seeing a small community of Polish workers establish themselves on the Island.
 

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Benefits of Diversity

Such diversity has brought many benefits, none more so than the vast increase in different cultural festivals that have sprung up over the last 50 years. The most famous, Notting Hill Carnival in London, was started back in the 1960s by West London’s Caribbean community and now attracts more than 2 million people each year, making it the second largest street festival in the world. 

Elsewhere in the UK you can find festivals such as Leicester’s Diwali (meaning “Festival of Light”) which celebrates Hindu, Sikh and Jainism’s main religious festival of the year. For many Brits this is a great way to experience the tastes, colours and aromas of one of the biggest cultural events on earth without having to catch a plane to Mumbai.

International communities are very well established in the UK and on the whole coexist peacefully with the indigenous peoples that live around them. This is noted by the relatively low level of racial tension that exists in places where international communities are established.

As of 2008 reports of racially motivated conflict remain below 1%, which is a very low figure for such a small island, where so many different cultures share the limited amount of space available.

By John Hillman

 

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USEFUL WORDS

 

multi-cultural / -ethnic = including people of several different races, religions, languages and traditions

race = one of the main groups that people can be divided into according to their physical differences, for example the colour of their skin

religion = the belief in the existence of a god or gods, and the activities that are connected with the worship of them

national = connected with one particular country

international = connected with many different countries

diversity = a range of many people who are very different from each other

coexist = to exist together in the same place in a peaceful way

immigrant = a person who has come to live permanently in a country that is not their own

migrant = a person who moves from one place to another, particularly to find work

settlement = a place where people have come to live and make their homes

festival = a day or period of the year when people stop working to celebrate a special event, often a religious one

homesick = sad because you are away from home and miss your family and friends

English ‘Loan Words’ from other Languages

English has gone through many periods in which large numbers of words from a particular language were borrowed.  A word borrowed from another language is known as a 'loan word'.
 
It is part of the cultural history of English speakers that they have always adopted loan words from the languages of whatever cultures they have come in contact with. There has never been a national academy in Britain, the U.S., or other English-speaking countries to attempt to restrict new loan words, as there has been in many European countries, such as France.

history (Greek)

ballet (French)

mosquito (Spanish)

broccoli (Italian)

piano (Italian)

yacht (Dutch)

anorak (Greenland)

candy (Arabic)

stripe (Dutch)

sketch (Dutch)

booze (Dutch)

noodle (German)

icon (Russian)

pyjamas (Hindi)

embarrass (Portuguese)

shampoo (Hindi)

chocolate (South American Indian)

ketchup (Malay)

typhoon (Chinese)

anonymous (Greek)