Remember this post? I never got around to making any more maps, but Duncan Stott’s map of English identity is suddenly relevant.
Interesting map of Census data showing how many people identify as 'English': pic.twitter.com/lX3mKE32Ph
— Duncan Stott (@DuncanStott) September 24, 2014
I had been planning to mock Daniel Davies for being an expert on public opinion and national identity in the Medway Towns because he’d flashed through on the Eurostar quite a lot, and maybe even link this with his long-running sarcasm about Thomas Friedman, but as you can see, he’s got a point. Look at that great big red blob.
So you see the value of Big Data. It can spare you a pointless twitter row.
Woking is green, wouldn’t have guessed Woking. Oxford, Reading, Luton, Cambridge yes, Woking no.
What’s the orange blob just to the north? Kingston? Richmond? The most northerly district of Surrey?
Although the Woking constituency is solidly Tory, Woking is one of the few places, possibly the one place, in Surrey, to have (have had in recent memory?) Labour councillors. There’s a sizeable South Asian community and as well as presumably significant amounts of immigration over the 12 years since I lived there.
Woking is green, wouldn’t have guessed Woking.
Must be the Martians.
As Paul points out, Woking has a big Asian community, and in fact has done for a long time: the Martians take out Woking mosque in “The War of the Worlds”. It really existed at the time HGW wrote it, and was one of the first in Britain.
Immigrants destroying a mosque? UKIP would be confused.
Spelthorne.
I still think we could do with seeing a similar map for ‘British’, which to these (50-year-old) ears has much more nationalistic & flag-waving overtones (B Movement, B National Party) than ‘English’ (which still sounds a bit quaint & country-dancing, even after the EDL). Also, personally I would describe myself as English (and not British), inasmuch as I see myself as both Welsh & English.
‘British’, which to these (50-year-old) ears has much more nationalistic & flag-waving overtones (B Movement, B National Party) than ‘English’
Then again, I seem to recall that BME people born in England are much more likely to identify as “British” rather than “English”. British is a civic nationality, English is an ethnos is the way they seem to see it.
Rugby League country seems pretty “English believing”
The north-eastern urban strand is fairly depressing, given that the industrial northern towns were built up late by Irish, Italians and other Catholic arrivals who had their own churches and schools and social clubs and were considered distinct communities at least as late as the 80s. I know the same applies to large parts of rugby league country, because that’s where the red-brick Catholic cathedrals were built.
Self-identifying as ‘English’ in the industrial north is oppositional: it means ‘white’, specifically ‘white, and pissed off that Asians now live on the streets where our immigrant grandparents once lived, even though we wouldn’t want to live there now.’
Bristol’s yellow might be skewed by the inclusion of that chunk of the Channel which looks like it’s bounded by Flat Holm and Steep Holm. Being tidal, it’s very cosmopolitan.
Heh. You underestimate my bourgeoisness – my knowledge of the north Kent coast in fact comes from renting a cottage in Whitstable for the summer every year – Whitstable itself is of course “Islington on sea” but you don’t have to go far, or to get very lost, before you’re somewhere that looks disturbingly like Wrexham.
Speaking of Wrexham, I’d be interested to see the rest of the UK included on this map, although given the colour scale it’d be a bit monochrome.
‘Disturbingly’ like Wrexham? Say what you like about the place, at least nobody is flying three St George’s flags from their house!!!!
RESIGN! BELANOV MUST GO!