History UsefulNotes / ATouchOfClassEthnicityAndReligion

An important note to begin with. When Britons call themselves or other people "Asian", they are usually referring to someone from South Asia, not East Asia as is the American default assumption. For many years ethnicity monitoring questions on government forms actually gave "Asian" and "UsefulNotes/{{Chin|a}}ese" as different options![[note]]Though as of the 2020s, the Asian category includes Chinese.[[/note]] Partly this is simply because most ethnically Asian people in Britain are of UsefulNotes/{{India}}n, UsefulNotes/{{Pakistan}}i, UsefulNotes/{{Bangladesh}}i, or UsefulNotes/SriLanka[=n=] origin, but it's also because people from the latter three countries get upset for good reason if they're described as "Indian". Another thing to note in rare informal context West Asians (Middle Easterners) also get called Asian in the UK. Also, there's some sensitivity about referring to people as "Pakistani" because of the common British use of the abbreviation "Paki" as a racist insult as extreme and explosive as the word "Nigger" is in the USA. In fact, while Paki is derivative of Pakistan, it is used as a generic racist slur towards brown-skinned Muslims, but also other South Asians, West Asians and North Africans. Famous people who have been victims of this include Zayn Malik (former Muslim, half Pakistani), [[Music/LittleMix Jade Thirlwall]] (non-Muslim with UsefulNotes/{{Egypt}}ian and UsefulNotes/{{Yemen}}i heritage, though she speaks fondly of her Yemeni Muslim grandfather) and Music/FreddieMercury (a British Indian Zoroastrian of Parsi ethnicity, born Farroukh Bulsara). Finally, whatever you do, don't refer to British Black people as African-American, as all and sundry will mock you mercilessly. Also, the Black community in the UK is mostly split between Black Africans and Black Caribbeans. So a British Black person being asked if they (or their ancestors) are from the Caribbean or Africa is normal.

This page is a brief guide to the UsefulNotes/UnitedKingdom's social structure. Whether you're British or not, it might contain some information that you might not be familiar with.

Also note that class is not directly related to how much money you or your family earn, though it can be heavily related to what school and what (if any) university you went to. Alas, TallPoppySyndrome is still somewhat prevalent; while it's nowhere near as it once was, {{social climb|er}}ing is not generally the done thing.

* '''Underclass''' -- People who do not work and subsist on state benefits or crime. Ten per cent of the adult population has not worked since 1997 and twenty per cent of British children are growing up in a household where no adult works. Depending on the definition used, this class may or may not specifically exclude {{housewi|fe}}ves (and other such adults subsisting on someone else's income for whatever reason), family caregivers, the handicapped, and such people whom society have deemed acceptable not to engage in paid work.

** '''Upper-middle class:''' Comprises senior management, professionals such as doctors, solicitors, university lecturers and the like (i.e., the "Working Rich"), and every rich person who doesn't come from a titled family. So billionaire Sir Richard Branson (not a [[UsefulNotes/KnightFever baronetcy]]) and former Prime Minister UsefulNotes/DavidCameron are considered upper-middle-class (although the latter does have some BlueBlood).

* '''Upper class''' -- If the other classes are defined by what you do for a living, upper-class people traditionally ''don't'' (i.e., the "IdleRich"). Historically this class was made up of the landed gentry and aristocracy who lived on the rents of the land they owned and their family's OldMoney. [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII The Second World War]] and modern taxes ended this lifestyle for almost everyone so most of the modern generation of lords and ladies actually have to work, though they tend to be more prevalent in advertising, the law, and media rather than 'trade', though many still keep up their family estates--albeit nowadays as tourist attractions. Furthermore, it became rather unseemly for the idle rich to act too ostentatiously idle, so many would take a day job just to be able to say they had one. For example, the infamous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bingham,_7th_Earl_of_Lucan Lord Lucan]] was technically a merchant banker with an annual salary of £500 (a princely sum for a commoner back in 1954), but he'd lose much more money than that daily at the gambling tables. The source of your money matters far more than the amount; all else being equal, an Army colonel on £80,000 a year (usually upper-middle/professional-class wages) would be generally regarded as slightly more upper-class than his twin brother businessman earning £160,000. Even investment banking and City trading, where the more fiscally adventurous younger scions of aristocracy had a firm place, was seen as slightly gauche.

An important note to begin with. When Britons call themselves or other people "Asian", they are usually referring to someone from South Asia, not East Asia as is the American default assumption. For many years ethnicity monitoring questions on government forms actually gave "Asian" and "UsefulNotes/{{Chin|a}}ese" as different options![[note]]Though as of the 2020s, the Asian category includes Chinese.[[/note]] Partly this is simply because most ethnically Asian people in Britain are of UsefulNotes/{{India}}n, UsefulNotes/{{Pakistan}}i, UsefulNotes/{{Bangladesh}}i, or UsefulNotes/{{Sri Lanka}}n origin, but it's also because people from the latter three countries get upset for good reason if they're described as "Indian". Another thing to note in rare informal context West Asians (Middle Easterners) also get called Asian in the UK. Also, there's some sensitivity about referring to people as "Pakistani" because of the common British use of the abbreviation "Paki" as a racist insult as extreme and explosive as the word "Nigger" is in the USA. In fact, while Paki is derivative of Pakistan, it is used as a generic racist slur towards brown-skinned Muslims, but also other South Asians, West Asians and North Africans. Famous people who have been victims of this include Zayn Malik (former Muslim, half Pakistani), Jade Thirwall (non-Muslim with UsefulNotes/{{Egypt}}ian and UsefulNotes/{{Yemen}}i heritage, though she speaks fondly of her Yemeni Muslim grandfather) and Music/FreddieMercury (a British Indian Zoroastrian of Parsi ethnicity, born Farroukh Bulsara). Finally, whatever you do, don't refer to British Black people as African-American, as all and sundry will mock you mercilessly. Also, the Black community in the UK is mostly split between Black Africans and Black Caribbeans. So a British Black person being asked if they (or their ancestors) are from the Caribbean or Africa is normal.

The non-White ethnic minorities (14.1%) of the UK are mostly found in [[BritainIsOnlyLondon London]]. Significant minority populations (in percentage of the local population terms) also exist in [[UsefulNotes/TheMidlands Leicester]], [[UsefulNotes/TheWestMidlands Birmingham]], [[UsefulNotes/HomeCounties Slough and Luton]], as well as the ghettos with large South Asian Muslim populations that exist in [[UsefulNotes/WarsOfTheRoses Lancashire and Yorkshire]]. Minorities are more common in cities and it is rarer (although far from unusual) to come across them in rural areas.

* '''Central and Eastern Europeans:''' [[OlderThanTheyThink Not actually that new.]] A large number of Jews arrived in Britain around 1900 from the UsefulNotes/RussianEmpire,[[note]]A few of these continental European Jews were responsible for many of the popular high street stores that still stand today, such as Marks & Spencer and Tesco.[[/note]] followed by considerable Polish, UsefulNotes/{{Gree|ce}}k, and UsefulNotes/{{Ital|y}}ian immigration after the Second World War. However, since the admission of several new states into UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion in 2004, quite a lot have arrived, taking mostly factory, building and service jobs. The credit crunch has seen many head back home, particularly the Poles (as Poland weathered the crisis rather better than Britain).

Of course, although their absolute numbers were far lower than today, there were non-White people in Britain before the twentieth century. The remains of ethnically African people have been discovered in graves dating from the era of UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire, there was already considerable immigration from South Asia and China in the eighteenth and nineteenth century,[[note]]The first Indian restaurant run by Indian people in London was opened in 1809.[[/note]] and Black Africans were brought into Britain as slaves during the same period.[[note]]That said, in Britain itself slave law didn't actually apply. They would have been traded in Africa or the New World, but after arriving in Britain they were merely indentured servants and technically had very limited rights as such -- although that didn't amount to much, such as the right to wages, any kind of living conditions, or to walk out of your job.[[/note]])

This resurgence grew -- to an extent (like all things involving Brexit, it is and was hideously complicated) -- the longer the Brexit process has been drawn out, with the rise of the [[SingleIssueWonk single-issue]] 'Brexit Party', which sought to ensure Brexit and otherwise had no discernible policies, with the traditionally centre-right Conservative Party tacking hard to the Islamophobic right to try to avoid haemorrhaging more votes. (After Brexit took place, the Brexit Party rebranded as Reform UK, which switched its focus to proclaiming 'PoliticalCorrectnessIsEvil' and opposing lockdowns associated with the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic.) The former Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson did not help matters, given his long-standing personal history of racism and other forms of bigotry, making comments like "watermelon smiles" in reference to people from sub-Saharan Africa, claiming women in burkhas look like letterboxes or bank robbers, and (while an opposition MP) even writing a novel, ''Seventy-Two Virgins'', which referred to people of Jewish descent fiddling election results.

Contrary to popular belief, the far right would likely do worse if voting took place based on proportional representation rather than the present regime of single-member plurality (or first-past-the-post) since (A) the most likely forms involve ranked voting and they are many people's absolute last choice and (B) electoral reformers claim proportional representation will greatly increase turnout, swamping the committed nutters with less committed moderates. Probably. Again, Brexit confuses things.

After the Reformation, the monasteries were "dissolved" and the assets seized by UsefulNotes/HenryVIII, on the specious grounds of debauchery by the monks. Contrary to common understanding, while he legalised the Church of England, Henry didn't fully convert the country to Protestantism -- that was actually left to his very young heir, Edward VI (who, being crowned at only 9, was subject to heavy influence by royal advisors).

Ironically, the last Stuart king (James II and VII) ''was'' a Catholic, which is why they got rid of him and replaced him with his very Protestant daughter, Mary II. Despite this, there remained certain pockets of Catholicism in Britain; leaving out Ireland, there was also the Scottish Highlands, as well as some parts of the North. Additionally, certain aristocratic families became firmly associated with Catholicism over the centuries, to the point where all of society ''expected'' them to be "recusant" (the legal term for English Catholics back then). Particularly notable are the Howard family, the main line of which, being the Dukes of Norfolk, were the seniormost non-royal aristocrats in the country and held certain hereditary roles in the government which they never lost[[note]]Well, they were occasionally stripped of their positions during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James I, plus the Commonwealth period, but they were always restored relatively shortly thereafter and UsefulNotes/CharlesII restored them permanently.[[/note]] despite being Catholic. At a certain point, it became virtually unthinkable for the Duke of Norfolk ''not'' to be Catholic (it sort of became one of those utterly incomprehensible institutions of which the British are so fond).[[note]]Incidentally, this is what the Dowager Countess of Grantham in ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' was referring to in Series 3 when she mentioned how the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk was both "a dear friend" and "more Catholic than the Pope". Even aggressively "normal" Protestant nobs like the Crawleys were willing to overlook a family's Catholicism if there was some kind of respectable explanation for it.[[/note]] (Interestingly, as one of the Duke of Norfolk's honorific titles is "Earl Marshal", a post whose chief responsibilities include organising the [[AwesomeMomentOfCrowning coronation of the monarch]], this means that a Catholic has been responsible for organising the distinctly Protestant coronation ceremony[[note]]The ceremony does have deep roots in England's Catholic era, with the earliest edition of the liturgy being written by St Dunstan for the crowning of [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfWessex Edgar the Peaceful]] in the 10th century, but there are several distinctly Protestant aspects of the ceremony, to say nothing of the fact that it takes place in Westminster Abbey, which belongs to the Church of England.[[/note]] for over 300 years.)

Most of the anti-Catholic laws were repealed in the early 19th century, but there is one notable exception -- if a member of the Royal Family were to become a Catholic or (until 2013) marry one, they are barred from ascending to the throne. In the 19th century, there was a secret society called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit-Cat_Club the Kit-Kat Club]] dedicated to ensuring the future heirs to the kingdom were all Protestant. (It either no longer exists, [[{{Pun}} or is having a break.]]) Lingering anti-Catholic feeling may have contributed to UsefulNotes/TonyBlair not formally converting to Catholicism until he had stood down as PM in 2007, although it was more likely simply his not wishing to make a big deal over his level of religious belief, as profession of and the influence of such tends to be more subdued than in the US even with pious politicians. As Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, inspiration for [[Series/TheThickOfIt Malcolm Tucker]], said when Blair was questioned on his faith, "we don't do God." For instance, when UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson may have technically converted to Catholicism to marry his latest wife, Carrie Johnson, in 2021, absolutely no one cared -- though that might have been down to the probably correct suspicion that religion meant even less to the famously irreverent and opportunistic Johnson (who was baptised a Catholic) than marriage vows.

Oh yes, business methods: Since the Dissenters were ''not'' prohibited from becoming craftsmen, and their religions tended not to frown upon and often even encouraged the pursuit of material success, they developed their crafts into industry--a field that Anglicans (particularly High Church Tories) were often too high-and-mighty to touch. Incidentally, these academies, especially the Quaker ones, are very often to this day among the most prestigious secondary schools in Britain outside of the traditional public schools.[[note]]They also inspired their brethren in America to establish similar academies, which are similarly often among the most prestigious schools in their region--witness the success of Sidwell Friends School in UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC, which has educated the sons and daughters of several American presidents--but only two who actually had Quaker connections (UsefulNotes/RichardNixon's daughters Tricia and Julie, who attended while Nixon was vice president from 1953 to 1961). Nixon was one of only two Quaker presidents. For the record, the children of the other Quaker president, UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover, remained in California when he first took federal office in the 1910s and '20s, and were in their 20s by the time he became President in 1929.[[/note]]

* William Murdoch: Another Scottish Presbyterian and assistant to Watt -- later a partner in his firm -- who capitalised on an observation by a long-forgotten Scottish earl[[note]]Specifically [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Cochrane,_9th_Earl_of_Dundonald Archibald Cochrane, 9th Earl of Dundonald]], who had rather a habit of inventing very useful things and not being able to market them. If his name and title sound familiar, his son [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cochrane,_10th_Earl_of_Dundonald Thomas "the Sea Wolf" Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald]] was a famous Royal Navy captain of UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars who (after a brief career in radical politics) lent his services to UsefulNotes/JoseDeSanMartin and UsefulNotes/BernardoOHiggins's [[UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWarsOfIndependence war to liberate Chile and Peru]], but now we're getting ahead of ourselves.[[/note]] and developed the first practical technique for using coal gas as a light source, allowing factories to be fully lit through the night at low cost, meaning that he's responsible for the 24-hour factory, and thus the night shift, and therefore shift work--in other words, working by the clock, rather than the Sun or your own sleep cycle. If you work a job where you come in at a certain time and leave at a certain time, you more or less have Murdoch to thank--or curse. In fairness, gas light meant that the streets were soon fully lit and safe to walk by night.

A large proportion of the basic science on which the industrial techniques were founded were also the product of Dissenters (and their Church of Scotland brethren); the most consequential are probably Joseph Priestley (John Wilkinson's brother-in-law, a Congregationalist-turned-Unitarian minister, and a bad preacher[[note]]Which interacted with his defense of Dissenters and support of political reform to incense both lower-class and upper-class Anglicans against him, with the result that he was first run out of Birmingham and then out of Britain altogether; he spent the last years of his life in rural Pennsylvania.[[/note]] but a great chemist--he discovered carbon dioxide and oxygen) and Joseph Black (a professor at the University of Glasgow who discovered latent heat,[[note]]On commission, we should note, from a group of Scotch whisky distillers, who wanted to know the [[ThriftyScot minimum amount of fuel they needed]] to boil their mash to produce the magical distillate.[[/note]] a concept critical to the development of efficient steam engines), but really, the whole scientific side of the Scottish Enlightenment (in full swing at the time) counts. And they financed much of this themselves, too: both Lloyds Bank and Barclays, the first banks to provide capital to the provincial cities where this business was happening, were founded by Quakers--largely because the Anglican financiers of London didn't think banking had a future outside the capital.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the Dissenters (and the Scots) had turned Britain into an industrial powerhouse, creating the middle bits of the aforementioned class structure (by creating the non-agricultural working class outright and by expanding the middle classes through various direct and indirect means), and establishing themselves as industrialists--in part ''because'' their ancestors had had their other opportunities severely limited (and to a lesser degree, ''because'' the Anglican upper crust laughed at them). So, thank you, C of E, we guess?[[note]]One last thing with Quakers: the three great chocolate companies of England, Cadbury's, Rowntree's, and Fry's, were all founded by Quakers. John Sentamu, archbishop of York since 2005 (York being the major centre of British chocolate manufacturing), has jokingly referred to the founders as the "Chocolate Trinity."[[/note]]

Jews have a long but sometimes unhappy history in Britain, with discrimination against them being common during the Middle Ages, including occasional bloody pogroms. There was ultimately the Edict of Expulsion of 1290, where all the Jews in England were expelled -- this was not formally overturned until 1656 by UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell, who it turns out wasn't as harsh a Puritan as people sometimes think. (Though in fairness letting the Jews back in was inspired by millenarianism. Why? Ask an eschatologist.)[[note]]Fun fact: many Jews who came to England as a result were Sephardic Jews (Jewish people from UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} and to a lesser extent UsefulNotes/{{Portugal}}) and brought with them a recipe for ''pescado frito'': fillets of fish, battered and deep-fried in oil, a perfect meal for the Sabbath which you could prepare on Friday afternoon to eat for lunch on Saturday, as it would keep for a whole day and still be crisp and tasty. The English gradually came to [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff rather like this fried fish]]. Centuries later, some English person put the frying of fish together with the frying of potatoes, and boom! You have a British institution.[[/note]] By 1874, Britain had an ethnically Jewish prime minister, UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli. (Religiously he was Christian -- in fact he'd become an MP many years before it became legal for observant Jews to hold public office -- but this was still a big deal, and he was proud of it.) Several Jewish Britons participated in the aforementioned Industrial Revolutionary intellectual ferment, chief among them David Ricardo--a descendant of Portuguese Jews who made great contributions to the science of economics, building on what UsefulNotes/AdamSmith (a Scot who [[InsistentTerminology called himself a "North Briton"]]) had started.

There are now quite a lot of Muslims in Britain (2.7 million at the 2011 Census), mostly (South) Asians. There have been small populations of Asian Muslims for quite some time, but their numbers didn't really take off until TheSixties and TheSeventies, when Asians in general started migrating. Discrimination against Muslims has generally been ethnic rather than religious (i.e., Asian Muslims and Asian Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Buddhists, etc., generally all faced the same treatment), but [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror recent events]] have led Baroness Warsi, co-chair of the Conservative Party and a Punjabi Muslim herself, to claim that Islamophobia is the last socially acceptable form of racism in Britain. This created a small stir in some circles, but was probably justified given frequent rejigged PoliticalCorrectnessIsEvil smear pieces in the right-wing tabloids about Muslims allegedly trying to impose their faith on others, of the "Muslims want ''Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs'' BANNED!" type, and the foundation of a new street-level far-right-wing group called the English Defence League, which claimed (very unconvincingly) to be non-racist and opposed to Islam.

'''Scottish person:''' Oh, like Inverness?\\

Another definition of the North is where people stop pronouncing "bath" as "baaahth". Strange to some, this has its problems as many in UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry also use the "Northern" pronunciation. This confusion and debate might be due to most political, business and media events largely happening in London; though one of the others may have hit upon something in the North-East and South-West divide, nothing seems to happen in the East either, so the Creator/{{BBC}} don't often call round to check up on the North-East. Another reason is that a lot of Southerners claim to be Northern because of the stereotype that Northerners are working-class miners from kitchen-sink dramas (which basically makes you sound both really hard and a victim of domestic abuse, the Top Trump of "My Upbringing Was More Difficult Than Yours"), so if their dad's from Nottingham they'll say they're Northern, even if they only go at the Easter holidays.

Historically, the mapping of region and accent ''could'' go back to the map of the Anglo-Saxon–Viking divide when the two groups came to an accord and ultimately settled England over the period between the withdrawal of the Roman Empire and the unification of England in the 10th century. The name 'Mercia' is still occasionally used as a romantic alternative to 'UsefulNotes/TheMidlands', as is Wessex occasionally invoked for UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry excluding UsefulNotes/{{Cornwall}}, possibly after being resurrected as an idea by Creator/ThomasHardy (and Prince Edward is earl of it, despite it no longer existing in any meaningful sense).[[note]]He got the ill-defined earldom because his mother, then Queen UsefulNotes/ElizabethII, wanted him to be the duke of Edinburgh when his father, who then held the title, had passed; by the time Prince Edward married, Prince Philip was 78, and nobody expected him to live to be almost a hundred. Prince Edward needed to have a title upon marriage, though, and so was given a random earldom -- apparently inspired by the title of Creator/ColinFirth's character in ''Film/ShakespeareInLove'', which Prince Edward apparently liked -- to use while he waited for his father to die.[[/note]] These borders were never precisely mapped, though (and they just ignore parts like some of the Pennines, which had land not worth the trouble of claiming) -- the best guess is the etymological origin of the names of landmarks (though border shifts could also result in the old name -- sometimes just the plain noun -- having the new noun tagged onto it, such as Torpenhow Hill in Cumbria: [[ShapedLikeItself Hillhillhill Hill]]).

** '''Upper-middle class:''' Comprises senior management, professionals such as doctors, solicitors, university lecturers and the like (i.e., the "Working Rich"), and every rich person who doesn't come from a titled family. So billionaire Sir Richard Branson (not a [[UsefulNotes/KnightFever baronetcy]]) and former Prime Minister UsefulNotes/DavidCameron are considered upper-middle class (although the latter does have some BlueBlood).

* '''Upper class''' -- If the other classes are defined by what you do for a living, upper-class people traditionally ''don't'' (i.e., the "IdleRich"). Historically this class was made up of the landed gentry and aristocracy who lived on the rents of the land they owned and their family's OldMoney. [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII The Second World War]] and modern taxes ended this lifestyle for almost everyone so most of the modern generation of lords and ladies actually have to work, though they tend to be more prevalent in advertising, the law, and media rather than 'trade', though many still keep up their family estates--albeit nowadays as tourist attractions. Furthermore, it became rather unseemly for the idle rich to act too ostentatiously idle, so many would take a day job just to be able to say they had one. For example, the infamous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bingham,_7th_Earl_of_Lucan Lord Lucan]] technically was a merchant banker with an annual salary of £500 (a princely sum for a commoner back in 1954), but he'd be losing much more money than that daily at the gambling tables. The source of your money matters far more than the amount; all else being equal, an Army colonel on £80,000 a year (usually upper-middle/professional-class wages) would be generally regarded as slightly more upper-class than his twin brother businessman earning £160,000. Even investment banking and City trading, where the more fiscally adventurous younger scions of aristocracy had a firm place, was seen as slightly gauche.

A person's accent is a good clue as to their social class, with upper class people sounding more formal.

An important note to begin with. When Britons call themselves or other people "Asian", they are usually referring to someone from South Asia, not East Asia as is the American default assumption. For many years ethnicity monitoring questions on government forms actually gave "Asian" and "UsefulNotes/{{Chin|a}}ese" as different options![[note]]Though as of the 2020s, the Asian category includes Chinese.[[/note]] Partly this is simply because most ethnically Asian people in Britain are of UsefulNotes/{{India}}n, UsefulNotes/{{Pakistan}}i, UsefulNotes/{{Bangladesh}}i, or UsefulNotes/{{Sri Lanka}}n origin, but it's also because people from the latter three countries get upset for good reason if they're described as "Indian". Another thing to note in rare informal context West Asians (Middle Easterners) also get called Asian in the UK. Also, there's some sensitivity about referring to people as "Pakistani" because of the common British use of the abbreviation "Paki" as a racist insult as extreme and explosive as the word "Nigger" is in the USA. In fact, while Paki is derivative of Pakistan, it is used as a generic racist slur towards brown-skinned Muslims, but also other South Asians, West Asians and North Africans. Famous people who have been victims of this include Zayn Malik (former Muslim, half Pakistani), Jade Thirwall (non-Muslim with Egyptian/Yemeni heritage, though she speaks fondly of her Yemeni Muslim grandfather) and Music/FreddieMercury (a British Indian Zoroastrian of Parsi ethnicity, born Farroukh Bulsara). Finally, whatever you do, don't refer to British Black people as African-American, as all and sundry will mock you mercilessly. Also, the Black community in the UK is mostly split between Black Africans and Black Caribbeans. So a British Black person being asked if they (or their ancestors) are from the Caribbean or Africa is normal.

One could write a rather interesting comparative history of racism in the US and UK. The UK never had the system of legalised segregation that the US had in its southern states, but there was a considerable amount of informal discrimination. Originally, the British Empire was one of the largest sources of slave traders, but they also banned slavery much earlier than the United States did and via the West Africa Squadron (which at one point included approximately a quarter of the Royal Navy), spent much of the 19th century taking a very hardline approach to traders who persisted... including non-British traders, who weren't actually bound by British law. This is rightly lauded as one of the great humanitarian triumphs as the Royal Navy, though it should also be noted that the motives weren't entirely altruistic. For one thing, the law gave the Navy an excuse to poke around any ship they wanted to, and enforce ''de facto'' British control of the Atlantic. For another, it gave Britain a leg up on slavery-based economic rivals by cutting off their labour supply.

There is still a fair amount of racism in the UK. The far right have had a worrying level of support, although it's actually much less than in most other European nations. The British National Party (regularly and reasonably [[FanNickname nicknamed]] the British Nazi Party) briefly had seats in the European Parliament. However, the waters have been significantly muddied by the 2016 Brexit referendum, which led to a significant resurgence in the far right, including the first political assassination in the UK since the end of the Troubles, of Labour MP Jo Cox by Thomas Mair, a neo-Nazi White supremacist.

This resurgence grew -- to an extent (like all things involving Brexit, it is and was hideously complicated) -- the longer the Brexit process has been drawn out, with the rise of the [[SingleIssueWonk single-issue]] 'Brexit Party', which sought to ensure Brexit and otherwise had no discernible policies, with the traditionally centre-right Conservative Party tacking hard to the Islamophobic right to try to avoid haemorrhaging more votes. (After Brexit took place, the Brexit Party rebranded as Reform UK and switched its focus to proclaiming 'PoliticalCorrectnessIsEvil' and opposing lockdowns associated with the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic.) The former Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson did not help matters, given his long-standing personal history of racism and other forms of bigotry, making comments like "watermelon smiles", claiming women in burkhas look like letterboxes or bank robbers, and (while an opposition MP) even writing a novel, ''Seventy-Two Virgins'', which referred to people of Jewish descent fiddling election results.

However, not only did opposition to Brexit rise sharply, particularly among younger voters, leading to a partial renaissance of the Liberal Democrats and of the pro-EU left, there was also pro-Brexit support on the far left (which hates the EU less for letting in all the foreigners, but for being a multinational capitalistic institution -- though, again, there's overlap there with the far right), which also has an unfortunate history of antisemitism.[[note]]It is generally accepted that there was a problem with antisemitism in the Labour Party during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn (2015–2020), and that the party was reluctant to accept or seriously investigate it, but that it was rather less widespread than portrayed, along with the fact that many in the media were very happy to give a pass to people from rival political parties being arguably more antisemitic, including Boris Johnson, who, as noted above, had written a book which engaged in blatant antisemitic stereotyping.[[/note]]

Contrary to popular belief, the far right would likely do worse if voting took place based on proportional representation rather than the present regime of single-member-plurality (or first-past-the-post) since (A) the most likely forms involve ranked voting and they are many people's absolute last choice and (B) electoral reformers claim proportional representation will greatly increase turnout, swamping the committed nutters with less committed moderates. Probably. Again, Brexit confuses things.

* James Watt: A Scottish Presbyterian who made critical changes making the Newcomen engine useful for anything other than pumping water out of coal mines; it could now turn any machinery relying on rotary power. Since the Dissenter-run industries ran on waterwheels, which were only really useful in fast-running streams far from urban centers, Watt's engine was basically an offer to any industrialist to liberate himself from water power and put his factory in the city, close to the demand for his products and his best supply of labor.

Ironically, the last Stuart king (James II and VII) ''was'' a Catholic, which is why they got rid of him and replaced him with his very Protestant daughter, Mary II. Despite this, there remained certain pockets of Catholicism in Britain; leaving out Ireland, there was also the Scottish Highlands, as well as some parts of the North. Additionally, certain aristocratic families became firmly associated with Catholicism over the centuries, to the point where all of society ''expected'' them to be "recusant" (the legal term for English Catholics back then). Particularly notable are the Howard family, the main line of which, being the Dukes of Norfolk, were the seniormost non-royal aristocrats in the country and held certain hereditary roles in the government which they never lost[[note]]Well, they were occasionally stripped of their positions during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James I, plus the Commonwealth period, but they were always restored relatively shortly thereafter and UsefulNotes/CharlesII restored them permanently.[[/note]] despite being Catholic. At a certain point, it became virtually unthinkable for the Duke of Norfolk ''not'' to be Catholic (it sort of became one of those utterly incomprehensible institutions of which the British are so fond).[[note]]Incidentally, this is what the Dowager Countess of Grantham in ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' was referring to in Series 3 when she mentioned how the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk was both "a dear friend" and "more Catholic than the Pope". Even aggressively "normal" Protestant nobs like the Crawleys were willing to overlook a family's Catholicism if there was some kind of respectable explanation for it.[[/note]](Interestingly, as one of the Duke of Norfolk's honorific titles is "Earl Marshal", a post whose chief responsibilities include organising the [[AwesomeMomentOfCrowning coronation of the monarch]], this means that a Catholic has been responsible for organising the distinctly Protestant coronation ceremony[[note]]The ceremony does have deep roots in England's Catholic era, with the earliest edition of the liturgy dating from the crowning of Edgar the Peaceful in the 10th century, but there are several distinctly Protestant aspects of the ceremony, to say nothing of the fact that it takes place in Westminster Abbey, which belongs to the Church of England.[[/note]] for over 300 years.)

An important note to begin with. When Britons call themselves or other people "Asian", they are usually referring to someone from South Asia, not East Asia as is the American default assumption. For many years ethnicity monitoring questions on government forms actually gave "Asian" and "UsefulNotes/{{Chin|a}}ese" as different options![[note]]Though as of the 2020s, the Asian category includes Chinese.[[/note]] Partly this is simply because most ethnically Asian people in Britain are of UsefulNotes/{{India}}n, UsefulNotes/{{Pakistan}}i, UsefulNotes/{{Bangladesh}}i, or UsefulNotes/{{Sri Lanka}}n origin, but it's also because people from the other three countries in that region get upset for good reason if they're described as "Indian". Another thing to note in rare informal context West Asians (Middle Easterners) also get called Asian in the UK. Also, there's some sensitivity about referring to people as "Pakistani" because of the common British use of the abbreviation "Paki" as a racist insult as extreme and explosive as the word "Nigger" is in the USA. In fact while Paki is deriverative of Pakistan, it is used as a racist slur towards brown-skinned Muslims, but also other South Asians, West Asians and North Africans. Famous people who have been victims of this include Zayn Malik (former Muslim, half Pakistani), Jade Thirwall (non-Muslim with Egyptian/Yemeni heritage, though she speaks fondly of her Yemeni Muslim grandfather however) and Music/FreddieMercury (a British Indian Zoroastrian of Parsi ethnicity, born Farroukh Bulsara). Finally, whatever you do, don't refer to British Black people as African-American, as you will be mocked mercilessly by all and sundry. Also, the Black community in the UK is mostly split between Black Africans and Black Caribbeans. So a British Black person being asked if they are from the Caribbean or Africa is normal.

Britain is still a mostly White country (particularly outside the cities), with 80.5% of the population being White British, 1% White UsefulNotes/{{Ir|eland}}ish and 4.4% White (Other) according to the 2011 census.[[note]]This is just for UsefulNotes/{{England}} and UsefulNotes/{{Wales}}, not the whole of the UK, although frankly UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} and UsefulNotes/NorthernIreland--with only about 12% of the population--can't really shift the numbers much, and Scotland's cities are diverse enough that although Scotland is pretty White, it's not a total whitewash.[[/note]] This is a pretty rapid and recent change; the 1991 census listed 94.1% of the population as White British.

Unsurprisingly, the proportion varies greatly around the country: under 2 per cent of Northern Ireland's people are non-White (in Northern Ireland, the census doesn't differentiate between White Irish and White British, for [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles obvious reasons]]). The Irish have migrated in large numbers to Britain for centuries; when the Irish economy was strong in [[TheNineties the late 1990s]] (referred to as 'UsefulNotes/TheCelticTiger', in reference to the 'Asian Tigers' of the same time period), this tailed off, but after [[TheNewTens the Irish economy went down the drain]], young Irish have been moving to Britain in quantity again (and, when they find that Britain isn't doing much better, a lot of them end up going to [[UsefulNotes/MeltingPot the US]] -- most commonly the East Coast, particularly UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity and UsefulNotes/{{Boston}}, although UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} is also popular).

* '''Central and Eastern Europeans:''' [[OlderThanTheyThink Not actually that new.]] A large number of Jews arrived in Britain around 1900 from the UsefulNotes/RussianEmpire,[[note]]A couple of these European Jews were responsible for many of the popular high street stores that still stand today, such as Marks & Spencer and Tesco.[[/note]] followed by considerable Polish, UsefulNotes/{{Gree|ce}}k, and UsefulNotes/{{Ital|y}}ian immigration after the Second World War. However, since the admission of several new states into UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion in 2004, quite a lot have arrived, taking mostly factory, building and service jobs. The credit crunch has seen many head back home, particularly the Poles (as Poland weathered the crisis rather better than Britain).

This resurgence grew -- to an extent (like all things involving Brexit, it is and was hideously complicated) -- the longer the Brexit process has been drawn out, with the rise of the [[SingleIssueWonk single-issue]] 'Brexit Party', which sought to ensure Brexit and otherwise had no discernible policies, with the traditionally centre-right Conservative Party tacking hard to the Islamophobic right to try to avoid haemorrhaging more votes. (After Brexit took place, the Brexit Party rebranded as Reform UK and switched its focus to proclaiming 'PoliticalCorrectnessIsEvil' and opposing lockdowns associated with the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic.) The former Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson did not help matters, given his long-standing personal history of racism and other forms of bigotry, making comments like watermelon smiles, claiming women in burkhas look like letterboxes or bank robbers, and (while an opposition MP) even writing a novel, ''Seventy-Two Virgins'', which referred to people of Jewish descent fiddling election results.

However, not only did opposition to Brexit rise sharply, particularly among younger voters, leading to a partial renaissance of the Liberal Democrats and of the pro-EU left, there was also pro-Brexit support on the far left (which hates the EU less for letting in all the foreigners, but for being a multinational capitalistic institution -- though, again, there's overlap with the far right), which also has an unfortunate history of antisemitism.[[note]]It is generally accepted that there was a problem with antisemitism in the Labour Party during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn (2015–2020), and that the party was reluctant to accept or seriously investigate it, but that it was rather less widespread than portrayed, along with the fact the media was very happy to give a pass to people from rival political parties being arguably more antisemitic, including Boris Johnson, who, as noted above, had written a book which engaged in blatant antisemitic stereotyping.[[/note]]

As of 2020, however, the issue of race in the UK and particular issues with racism in the police, has come up again thanks to the international UsefulNotes/BlackLivesMatterMovement. The gist is pointing out both that the UK has historically skated over the less pleasant aspects of its imperial past, and that British police forces haven't changed from the late 1990s, when London's Metropolitan Police was infamously described as "institutionally racist" by the Macpherson Report that came about in light of the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. While the unarmed nature of the majority of British police (and the associated training in de-escalation) mean that shootings are far less common, the police have a reputation for picking on minorities and brutality, including deaths in custody. Like in the US, this has also found its way out through sports, with a lot of former and current UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball players coming forward with stories of racism that they have experienced. Since football is arguably the closest thing to a real national religion that the UK has, and football clubs are often deeply integrated into the local community, this is taken more seriously than it might otherwise be.

Catholics were subjected to organised discrimination, such as the Disenfranchising Act 1727 in Ireland, barring all of them from voting. This also applied to other "non-conformists", such as the "Clarendon Code" (though Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon and chief minister, didn't write them or fully approve of them). These effectively barred them from holding public offices.\\
\\
Henry's daughter and Edward's half-sister, [[UsefulNotes/MaryTudor Mary I]] (who inherited when Edward died unmarried aged 15), converted the country back to Catholicism, and executed numerous Protestants, hence being known as Bloody Mary. However, she was childless and died only a few years after taking the throne, so her Protestant half-sister, UsefulNotes/ElizabethI, converted it back to Protestantism. However, the ever-pragmatic Elizabeth made at least a token effort not to offend Catholic Europe in her reconversion, retaining a lot of Catholic structure, ritual, and doctrine. This plus the whole being on an island thing helped keep England largely out of the Continental Wars of Religion.[[note]]The only significant challenge by a Catholic power to Elizabeth's rule was the Spanish Armada incident, and religious differences were mostly icing on the cake for King Philip: the late Queen Mary had been his wife, and during her reign he had been declared King of England ''jure uxoris''. He thus felt he should have gotten the English throne when she died. It's entirely possible that he would have attacked England whether it was Protestant or Catholic unless Elizabeth firmly committed England to an alliance with Spain (which the ever-strategic and fiercely independent Elizabeth would never do, no matter her religious persuasion).[[/note]]\\
\\
During the reign of [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfStuart the Stuarts]], there was a kind of RedScare against Catholics, thanks to the scaremongering tactics of Titus Oates and others -- people believed that there was a widespread conspiracy to overthrow the British monarchy and forcibly convert all Britons to Catholicism. It got so bad that people were afraid to go out to the theatre in case the Catholics got them. Laws were put in place to make sure Catholics could never have power in Britain again.\\
\\
Ironically, the last Stuart king (James II and VII) ''was'' a Catholic, which is why they got rid of him and replaced him with his very Protestant daughter, Mary II. Despite this, there remained certain pockets of Catholicism in Britain; leaving out Ireland, there was also the Scottish Highlands, as well as some parts of the North. Additionally, certain aristocratic families became firmly associated with Catholicism over the centuries, to the point where all of society ''expected'' them to be "recusant" (the legal term for English Catholics back then). Particularly notable are the Howard family, the main line of which, being the Dukes of Norfolk, were the seniormost non-royal aristocrats in the country and held certain hereditary roles in the government which they never lost[[note]]Well, they were occasionally stripped of their positions during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James I, plus the Commonwealth period, but they were always restored relatively shortly thereafter and UsefulNotes/CharlesII restored them permanently.[[/note]] despite being Catholic. At a certain point, it became virtually unthinkable for the Duke of Norfolk ''not'' to be Catholic (it sort of became one of those utterly incomprehensible institutions of which the British are so fond).[[note]]Incidentally, this is what the Dowager Countess of Grantham in ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' was referring to in Series 3 when she mentioned how the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk was both "a dear friend" and "more Catholic than the Pope". Even aggressively "normal" Protestant nobs like the Crawleys were willing to overlook a family's Catholicism if there was some kind of respectable explanation for it.[[/note]](Interestingly, as one of the Duke of Norfolk's honorific titles is "Earl Marshal", a post whose chief responsibilities include organising the [[AwesomeMomentOfCrowning coronation of the monarch]], this means that a Catholic has been responsible for organising the distinctly Protestant coronation ceremony[[note]]The ceremony does have deep roots in England's Catholic era, with the earliest edition of the liturgy dating from the crowning of Edgar the Peaceful in the 10th century, but there are several distinctly Protestant aspects of the ceremony, to say nothing of the fact that it takes place in Westminster Abbey, which belongs to the Church of England.[[/note]] for over 300 years.)\\
\\
Most of the anti-Catholic laws were repealed in the early 19th century, but there is one notable exception -- if a member of the Royal Family were to become a Catholic or (until 2013) marry one, they are barred from ascending to the throne. In the 19th century, there was a secret society called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit-Cat_Club the Kit-Kat Club]] dedicated to ensuring the future heirs to the kingdom were all Protestant. (It either no longer exists, [[{{Pun}} or is having a break.]]) Lingering anti-Catholic feeling may have contributed to UsefulNotes/TonyBlair not formally converting to Catholicism until he had stood down as PM in 2007, although it was more likely simply his not wishing to make a big deal over his level of religious belief, as profession of and the influence of such tends to be more subdued than in the US even with pious politicians. As Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, inspiration for [[Series/TheThickOfIt Malcolm Tucker]], said when Blair was questioned on his faith, "we don't do God." For instance, when UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson may have technically converted to Catholicism to marry his latest wife, Carrie Johnson, in 2021, absolutely no one cared -- though that might have been down to the probably correct suspicion that religion meant even less to the famously irreverent and opportunistic Johnson (who was baptised a Catholic) than marriage vows.\\
\\

Because the Church of England's split from Rome was because of the King's sex life rather than popular demand, the Anglican Church has always had a rather wider range of internal doctrinal difference than most Christian denominations. The traditional split, to simplify things considerably, has been between the Anglo-Catholics, or "High Church", who think that just because you reject the authority of the Pope doesn't mean you can't continue to substantially accept Catholic doctrines and practices, and the Evangelicals, or "Low Church", who are fully Protestant in their doctrines and practices. The UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar was partly a religious conflict, with the High Church siding predominantly with the King and the Low Church with Parliament. Between these there has historically been a third "Broad Church" position (also called "Latitudinarian" among people overly fond of fancy-sounding words) which doesn't see what the fuss is about and mixes and matches between High and Low Church based on what they find resonant or convenient. Since the nineteenth century another element has been added in the shape of the Modernist/Liberal wing. These, stereotypically, are the kind of people who hold yoga sessions in the church hall, publicly doubt the bodily Resurrection, and want to be able to hold same-sex marriages in church. (Hardly anybody cares about ''civil'' same-sex marriage since it was legalised in England and Wales in 2014, but whether the Church of England should perform them is still a hot topic.)\\
\\
Note that the political associations of the High and Low Churches have to some extent dissipated and even reversed. Most notably, the ultra-High-Church Oxford Movement of the 19th century was devoted to making Anglicanism as much like Catholicism as possible, with the hope of an eventual reconciliation or at least ''rapprochement'' with Rome; those in the movement were often the period equivalent of champagne socialists and tended to have conciliatory/'pro-Irish' views on UsefulNotes/TheIrishQuestion (historically characteristic of the left) and as a result, many High Church members are today associated with the Christian left (Tony Blair, an Anglo-Catholic prior to his conversion to Catholicism, is probably the most prominent contemporary example). In the meantime, many Low Church members became the sort of business-oriented, religiously conservative small shopkeepers who back the Conservatives.\\
\\

Beyond the Low Church wing of Anglicanism, there are a variety of even more Protestant denominations who reject the Anglican system as too centralised and/or too much of a compromise with Catholicism, including Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists,[[note]]Who occupied an odd position, as they split off from Low Church Anglicanism in the 18th century and were never quite as marginalised; they were officially just a reformist movement of the Church of England until shortly after the death of one of the founders, John Wesley, in 1791.[[/note]] and a host of other smaller and sometimes short-lived movements. These are collectively known as Nonconformists (as in refusing to "conform" to Anglicanism) or Dissenters, and were persecuted and restricted at times in the past. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dissenters were, like Catholics, generally prohibited from holding public office, attending university, or even having churches in the cities. As time went on, these restrictions were lifted, but not before they built an elaborate network of academies that, unlike their Church of England counterparts, taught practical subjects like applied mathematics, science, (living) foreign languages, engineering, and business methods.\\
\\
Oh yes, business methods: Since the Dissenters were ''not'' prohibited from becoming craftsmen, and their religions tended not to frown upon and often even encouraged the pursuit of material success, they developed their crafts into industry--a field that Anglicans (particularly High Church Tories) were often too high-and-mighty to touch. Incidentally, these academies, especially the Quaker ones, are very often to this day among the most prestigious secondary schools in Britain outside of the traditional public schools.[[note]]They also inspired their brethren in America to establish similar academies, which are similarly often among the most prestigious schools in their region--witness the success of Sidwell Friends School in UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC, which has educated the sons and daughters of several American presidents--but only two who actually had Quaker connections (UsefulNotes/RichardNixon's daughters Tricia and Julie, who attended while Nixon was vice president from 1953 to 1961). Nixon was one of only two Quaker presidents. For the record, the children of the other Quaker president, UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover, remained in California when he first took federal office in the 1910s and '20s, and were in their 20s by the time he became President in 1929.[[/note]]\\
\\
The Treaty of Union (1707) which combined England with Scotland included protection of Scotland's own established church, the Church of Scotland (known in Scots and informal English as "the Kirk"), which is Presbyterian (the Scottish Anglican minority is known as the Scottish Episcopal Church). It has had several acrimonious splits over its history. The stereotype of these folks, in sharp contrast to the Anglicans, is grey-haired, grizzled ministers with hard boots preaching the coming [[DoomyDoomsOfDoom Doom of the world]] and railing against sinful ''fun''. This is seldom true, and the few instances will be found in the Western Isles or rural areas of the Highlands. Most of these will be part of one of the smaller splinter churches from the Kirk known as the Wee Frees (the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the Association of Free Churches, the Free Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) and so-on), some of which are unrelated and some of which result from the [[WeAreStrugglingTogether traditional and ongoing habit of schisming]] (the most recent was in 2000).\\
\\
As a consequence, the Dissenters -- along with some Scots (the hardworking, business-minded Lowlanders who made up the core of the Kirk's membership found the English Dissenters most congenial as brothers in faith and as business partners) -- were absolutely critical in making Britain what it became. As the craftsmen Dissenters and Scots quickly discovered, the basic tools of industrialisation were lying all around them, with many key inventions dating back to the Middle Ages: things like techniques for running heavy machinery on power (usually water power, which sent a lot of Dissenters to the hills, where fast-running streams were in ample supply) and processes for making glass that, it turns out, translated easily to metallurgy.\\
\\
With no way to get ahead except starting a business and turning a huge profit, these Dissenters (and their Scottish brethren) started to put old technologies together in ways that changed the world -- all with an eye to making a fast buck from the rich Anglican snobs who disdained them but also seemed collectively to have more money than sense. The origin of the Industrial Revolution is thus peppered with the names of the Dissenters and Scottish Presbyterians who put these pieces together. Significant names in this lot include:

A large proportion of the basic science on which the industrial techniques were founded were also the product of Dissenters (and their Church of Scotland brethren); the most consequential are probably Joseph Priestley (John Wilkinson's brother-in-law, a Congregationalist-turned-Unitarian minister, and a bad preacher[[note]]Which interacted with his defense of Dissenters and support of political reform to incense both lower-class and upper-class Anglicans against him, with the result that he was first run out of Birmingham and then out of Britain altogether; he spent the last years of his life in rural Pennsylvania.[[/note]] but a great chemist--he discovered carbon dioxide and oxygen) and Joseph Black (a professor at the University of Glasgow who discovered latent heat,[[note]]On commission, we should note, from a group of Scotch whisky distillers, who wanted to know the [[ThriftyScot minimum amount of fuel they needed]] to boil their mash to produce the magical distillate.[[/note]] a concept critical to the development of efficient steam engines), but really, the whole scientific side of the Scottish Enlightenment (in full swing at the time) counts. And they financed much of this themselves, too: both Lloyds Bank and Barclays, the first banks to provide capital to the provincial cities where this business was happening, were founded by Quakers--largely because the Anglican financiers of London didn't think banking had a future outside the capital.\\
\\

Jews have a long but sometimes unhappy history in Britain, with discrimination against them being common during the Middle Ages, including occasional bloody pogroms. There was ultimately the Edict of Expulsion of 1290, where all the Jews in England were expelled -- this was not formally overturned until 1656 by UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell, who it turns out wasn't as harsh a Puritan as people sometimes think. (Though in fairness letting the Jews back in was inspired by millenarianism. Why? Ask an eschatologist.)[[note]]Fun fact: many Jews who came to England as a result were Sephardic Jews (Jewish people from UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} and to a lesser extent UsefulNotes/{{Portugal}}) and brought with them a recipe for ''pescado frito'': fillets of fish, battered and deep-fried in oil, a perfect meal for the Sabbath which you could prepare on Friday afternoon to eat for lunch on Saturday, as it would keep for a whole day and still be crisp and tasty. The English gradually came to [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff rather like this fried fish]]. Centuries later, some English person put the frying of fish together with the frying of potatoes, and boom! You have a British institution.[[/note]] By 1874, Britain had an ethnically Jewish prime minister, UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli. (Religiously he was Christian -- in fact he'd become an MP many years before it became legal for observant Jews to hold public office -- but this was still a big deal, and he was proud of it.) Several Jewish Britons participated in the aforementioned Industrial Revolutionary intellectual ferment, chief among them David Ricardo--a descendant of Portuguese Jews who made great contributions to the science of economics, building on what UsefulNotes/AdamSmith (a Scot who [[InsistentTerminology called himself a "North Briton"]]) had started.\\\
There are now quite a lot of Muslims in Britain (2.7 million at the 2011 Census), mostly (South) Asians. There have been small populations of Asian Muslims for quite some time, but their numbers didn't really take off until TheSixties and TheSeventies, when Asians in general started migrating. Discrimination against Muslims has generally been ethnic rather than religious (i.e., Asian Muslims and Asian Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Buddhists, etc., generally all faced the same treatment), but [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror recent events]] have led Baroness Warsi, co-chair of the Conservative Party and a Punjabi Muslim herself, to claim that Islamophobia is the last socially acceptable form of racism in Britain. This created a small stir in some circles, but was probably justified given frequent rejigged PoliticalCorrectnessIsEvil smear pieces in the right-wing tabloids about Muslims allegedly trying to impose their faith on others, of the "Muslims want ''Literature/TheThreeLittlePigs'' BANNED!" type, and the foundation of a new street-level far-right-wing group called the English Defence League, which claimed (very unconvincingly) to be non-racist and opposed to Islam.\\\
There are also a considerable numbers of Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists in Britain. The first two of these outnumber Jews in Britain and the last one has approximately the same number of adherents. Hindus and Sikhs are mostly concentrated in the South East and Leicester whilst Buddhists are present in small numbers all over the country with the most Buddhist town in the UK being the military town of Aldershot in Hampshire mainly due to it being home to large numbers of Buddhist [[UsefulNotes/NepaliWithNastyKnives Gurkhas]] who were allowed to settle in England and chose to do so near where they had been based whilst in the army. The oldest Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in Europe is also in the UK, Samyé Ling at Eskdale in the Scottish Borders. Music/LeonardCohen and Music/DavidBowie studied Buddhism there in the late 1960s; Bowie almost became a monk at Samyé Ling, but ultimately decided to pursue pop music rather than celibacy.

[[folder:The North/South Divide]]

One clear division that can be seen in the UK is the divide between the "North" of England and the "South". The precise divide is debated (common ones are the Watford Gap Service Station in Northamptonshire,[[note]]Not to be confused with the town of Watford, much further south in Hertfordshire.[[/note]] the most northerly point where one can buy the ''Evening Standard'' [Oxford], and ''anywhere outside the M25''), but the 1983 general election, where Labour won only three seats south of Birmingham outside of Greater London, gives you a good hint.

'''''Note that the North-South Divide refers to the north and south of England, not England/Scotland rivalry.''''' Care '''must''' be taken when referring to a place as The North, as this can mean northern England ("OopNorth"), Northern Ireland ("Da North"), or northern Scotland. A not too uncommon conversation (here between an English and a Scottish person) might go:

'''Scottish person:''' So the South.\\

Another definition of the North is where people stop pronouncing "bath" as "baaahth". Strange to some, this has its problems as many in UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry also use the "Northern" pronunciation. This confusion and debate might be due to most political, business and media events largely happening in London, though one of the others may have hit upon something in the North-East and South-West divide, nothing seems to happen in the East either, so the Creator/{{BBC}} don't often call round to check up on the North-East. Another reason is that a lot of Southerners claim to be Northern because of the stereotype that Northerners are working-class miners from kitchen-sink dramas (which basically makes you sound both really hard and a victim of domestic abuse, the Top Trump of "My Upbringing Was More Difficult Than Yours"), so if their dad's from Nottingham they'll say they're Northern, even if they only go at the Easter Holidays.

Historically, the mapping of region and accent ''could'' go back to the map of the Anglo-Saxon/Viking divide when the two groups came to an accord and ultimately settled England over the period between the withdrawal of the Roman Empire and the unification of England in the 10th century. The name 'Mercia' is still occasionally used as a romantic alternative to 'UsefulNotes/TheMidlands', as is Wessex occasionally invoked for UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry excluding UsefulNotes/{{Cornwall}}, possibly after being resurrected as an idea by Thomas Hardy (and Prince Edward is earl of it, despite it no longer existing in any meaningful sense).[[note]]He got the ill-defined earldom because his mother, then Queen UsefulNotes/ElizabethII, wanted him to be the duke of Edinburgh when his father, who then held the title, had passed; by the time Prince Edward married, Prince Philip was 78, and nobody expected him to live to be almost a hundred. Prince Edward needed to have a title upon marriage, though, and so was given a random earldom -- apparently inspired by the title of Creator/ColinFirth's character in ''Film/ShakespeareInLove'', which Prince Edward apparently liked -- to use while he waited for his father to die.[[/note]] These borders were never precisely mapped, though (and they just ignore parts like some of the Pennines, which had land not worth the trouble of claiming) -- the best guess is the etymological origin of the names of landmarks (though border shifts could also result in the old name -- sometimes just the plain noun -- having the new noun tagged onto it, such as Torpenhow Hill in Cumbria: [[ShapedLikeItself Hillhillhill Hill]]).

Britain has far more strictly defined class divisions than UsefulNotes/TheUnitedStates and many other countries. People categorise them in many ways. Some people will tell you that class is dead in modern Britain; do not believe them. It has ceased to ''matter'' as it once did, and most of the old elitist bastions now happily admit anyone with the right qualifications or enough money. Class is sadly [[SlobsVersusSnobs alive and kicking]], though -- a good way to tell is by looking at the different demographics targeted by UsefulNotes/BritishNewspapers.

* '''Underclass''' -- Do not work and subsist on state benefits or crime. Ten per cent of the adult population has not worked since 1997 and twenty per cent of British children are growing up in a household where no adult works. Depending on the definition used, this class may or may not specifically exclude {{housewi|fe}}ves (and other such adults subsisting on someone else's income for whatever reason), family caregivers, the handicapped, and such people whom society have deemed acceptable not to engage in paid work.

** '''Upper-middle class:''' Not only includes senior management, professionals such as doctors, solicitors, university lecturers and the like (i.e. the "Working Rich"), but any rich person who doesn't come from a titled family. So billionaire Sir Richard Branson (not a [[UsefulNotes/KnightFever baronetcy]]) and former Prime Minister UsefulNotes/DavidCameron are considered upper-middle class (although the latter does have some BlueBlood).

* '''Upper class''' -- If the other classes are defined by what you do for a living, upper-class people traditionally ''don't'' (i.e. the "IdleRich"). Historically this class was made up of the landed gentry and aristocracy who lived on the rents of the land they owned and their family's OldMoney. [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII The Second World War]] and modern taxes ended this lifestyle for almost everyone so most of the modern generation of lords and ladies actually have to work, though they tend to be more prevalent in advertising, the law, and media rather than 'trade', though many still keep up their family estates--albeit nowadays as tourist attractions. Furthermore, it became rather unseemly for the idle rich to act too ostentatiously idle, so many would take a day-job just to be able to say they have one, for example, the infamous Lord Lucan technically was a merchant banker with an annual salary of £500 (a princely sum for a commoner back in 1954), but he'd be losing much more money than that daily at the gambling tables. The source of your money matters far more than the amount; all else being equal, an Army colonel on £80,000 a year (usually upper-middle/professional-class wages) would be generally regarded as slightly more upper-class than his twin brother businessman earning £160,000. Even investment banking and City trading, where the more fiscally adventurous younger scions of aristocracy had a firm place, was seen as slightly gauche.

The upper and working classes have at least one feature in common with each other; being at the top and bottom of the scale respectively, they tend not to notice the many nuances found in the middle class, and instead have a more binary 'us and them' perspective. Kate Fox's book ''Watching the English'' has an extensive discussion.

->'''DCI Dick Catherwood''' (white guy): Get in there, Get into the community and find out what they know.
->'''DI Moses Jones''' (second generation Afro-Caribbean guy): You want me to go around asking local Africans about ritual killing?

->'''DI Moses Jones''': I am from ''Shepherd's Bush''.[[note]]Shepherds Bush is a west London suburb, in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, if you want to be technical.[[/note]]

An important note to begin with. When Britons call themselves or other people "Asian", they are usually referring to someone from South Asia, not East Asia as is the American default assumption. For many years ethnicity monitoring questions on government forms actually gave "Asian" and "Chinese" as different options![[note]]Though as of the 2020s Chinese is now included in the Asian category.[[/note]] Partly this is simply because most ethnically Asian people in Britain are of Indian/UsefulNotes/{{Pakistan}}i/UsefulNotes/{{Bangladesh}}i/UsefulNotes/{{Sri Lanka}}n origin, but it's also because people from the other three countries in that region get upset for good reason if they're described as "Indian". Another thing to note in rare informal context West Asians (middle easterners) also get called Asian in the UK. Also, there's some sensitivity about referring to people as "Pakistani" because of the common British use of the abbreviation "Paki" as a racist insult as extreme and explosive as the word "Nigger" is in the USA. In fact while Paki is deriverative of Pakistan, it is used as a racist slur towards brown-skinned Muslims, but also other South Asians, West Asians and North Africans. Famous people who have been victims of this include Zayn Malik (former Muslim, half Pakistani), Jade Thirwall (non-Muslim with Egyptian/Yemeni heritage, though she speaks fondly of her Yemeni Muslim grandfather however) and Music/FreddieMercury (born Farroukh Bulsara a British Indian Zoroastrian of Parsi ethnicity). Finally, whatever you do, don't refer to British Black people as African-American, as you will be mocked mercilessly by all and sundry. Also, the Black community in the UK is mostly split between Black Africans and Black Caribbeans. So a British Black person being asked if they are from the Caribbeans or Africa is normal.

Britain is still a mostly white country (particularly outside the cities), with 80.5% of the population being White British, 1% White UsefulNotes/{{Ir|eland}}ish and 4.4% White (Other) according to the 2011 census.[[note]]This is just for UsefulNotes/{{England}} and UsefulNotes/{{Wales}}, not the whole of the UK, although frankly UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} and UsefulNotes/NorthernIreland--with only about 12% of the population--can't really shift the numbers much, and Scotland's cities are diverse enough that although Scotland is pretty White, it's not a total whitewash.[[/note]] This is a pretty rapid and recent change; the 1991 census listed 94.1% of the population as White British.

Unsurprisingly, the proportion varies greatly around the country with Northern Ireland having under 2 per cent of its population being non-white (in Northern Ireland, the census doesn't differentiate between White Irish and White British, for [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles obvious reasons]]). The Irish have migrated in large numbers to Britain for centuries; when the Irish economy was strong (referred to as 'the Celtic Tiger', in reference to the 'Asian Tigers' of the same time period), this tailed off, but after [[TheNewTens the Irish economy went down the drain]], young Irish have been moving to Britain in quantity again (and, when they find that Britain isn't doing much better, a lot of them end up going to [[UsefulNotes/MeltingPot the US]] -- most commonly the East Coast, particularly UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity and UsefulNotes/{{Boston}}, although UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} is also popular).

The non-white ethnic minorities (14.1%) of the UK are mostly found in [[BritainIsOnlyLondon London]]. Significant minority populations (in percentage of the local population terms) also exist in [[UsefulNotes/TheMidlands Leicester]], [[UsefulNotes/TheWestMidlands Birmingham]], [[UsefulNotes/HomeCounties Slough and Luton]], as well as this ghettos with large South Asian Muslim populations that exist in [[UsefulNotes/WarsOfTheRoses Lancashire and Yorkshire]]. Minorities are more common in cities and it is rarer (although far from unusual) to come across them in rural areas.

* '''Afro/Caribbean blacks:''' At least 3% of the population -- split fairly evenly (11:18) between Caribbean (from the British West Indies) and African (from the African nations that used to be in UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire) respectively. In the last 10 years the number of black African people in Britain has overtaken the number from the Caribbean. Although [[OlderThanTheyThink present in miniscule numbers]] since at least the [[TheCavalierYears 17th and 18th century]], if not Roman times. The Caribbean variety first arrived in the 1950s and are entering third-generation status whilst the African ones tend to be more recent immigrants. Interracial relationships amongst Afro-Caribbeans and whites are now so common that people of Afro-Caribbean descent are expected to dwindle to almost none as a distinct group.
* '''South Asian:''' At least 5% of the population -- those from the former [[UsefulNotes/TheRaj British India]], split between Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and those who fled from UsefulNotes/IdiAmin's UsefulNotes/{{Uganda}} and stayed. Most of these people largely arrived in the 1970s, although communities had already been established in Victorian times. The second and third are mostly Muslim. This has led to some tensions in British society -- with homegrown terrorism, most notably the 7/7 and London Bridge/Borough Market terrorist attacks, carried out by British-born Muslims.

* '''Central and Eastern Europeans:''' Not actually that new. A large number of Jews arrived in Britain around 1900 from the UsefulNotes/RussianEmpire,[[note]]A couple of these European Jews were responsible for many of the popular high street stores that still stand today, such as Marks & Spencer and Tesco.[[/note]] followed by considerable Polish, UsefulNotes/{{Gree|ce}}k, and UsefulNotes/{{Ital|y}}ian immigration after the Second World War. However, since the admission of several new states into UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion in 2004, quite a lot have arrived, taking mostly factory, building and service jobs. The credit crunch has seen many head back home, particularly the Poles (as Poland weathered the crisis rather better than Britain).

Many from these groups are now third-generation immigrants, although there are still many more recent newcomers, some from elsewhere in the world. For instance, the rapidly growing Latino community in South London, two-thirds of which is composed from migrants who arrived after 2000, and which now outnumbers the longer established UsefulNotes/{{Chin|a}}ese community.

Of course, although absolute numbers were far lower, there were non-white people in Britain before the twentieth century. The remains of ethnically African people have been discovered in graves dating from the era of UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire, there was already considerable immigration from South Asia and China in the eighteenth and nineteenth century,[[note]]The first Indian restaurant run by Indian people in London was opened in 1809.[[/note]] and black Africans were brought into Britain as slaves during the same period.[[note]]That said, in Britain itself slave law didn't actually apply. They would have been traded in Africa or the New World, but after arriving in Britain they were merely indentured servants and technically had very limited rights as such -- although that didn't amount to much, such as the right to wages, any kind of living conditions, or to walk out of your job.[[/note]])

!Racial Issues in UK

There is still a fair amount of racism in the UK. The far right have had a worrying level of support, although it's actually lot less than in most other European nations. The British National Party (regularly and reasonably [[FanNickname nicknamed]] the British Nazi Party) briefly had seats in the European Parliament. However, the waters have been significantly muddied by the 2016 Brexit referendum, which led to a significant resurgence in the far right, including the first political assassination in the UK since the end of the Troubles, of Labour MP Jo Cox by Thomas Mair, a neo-Nazi white supremacist.

This resurgence has grown -- to an extent (like all things involving Brexit, it's been hideously complicated) -- the longer the Brexit process has been drawn out, with the rise of the single-issue 'Brexit Party', which seeks to ensure Brexit and otherwise has no discernible policies, with the traditionally centre-right Conservative Party tacking hard to the Islamophobic right to try and avoid haemorrhaging more votes. This is not helped by the former Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson having a long-standing history of racism and other forms of bigotry, making comments like watermelon smiles, claiming women in burkhas look like letterboxes or bank robbers, and (while an opposition MP) even writing a novel, ''Seventy-Two Virgins'', which referred to people of Jewish descent fiddling election results.

However, not only has opposition to Brexit risen sharply, particularly among younger voters, leading to a partial renaissance of the Liberal Democrats and of the pro-EU left, there's also pro-Brexit support on the far left (which hates the EU less for letting in all the foreigners, but for being a multinational capitalistic institution -- though, again, there's overlap with the far right), which also has an unfortunate history of antisemitism.[[note]]It is generally accepted that there was a problem with antisemitism in the Labour Party during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn (2015–2020), and that the party was reluctant to accept or seriously investigate it, but that it was nowhere near as widespread as portrayed, along with the fact the media was very happy to give a pass to people from rival political parties being arguably more antisemitic, including Boris Johnson who had written a book which engaged in blatant antisemitic stereotyping.[[/note]]

Contrary to popular belief, the far right will likely do worse under proportional representation since (A) the most likely forms involve ranked voting and they are many people's absolute last choice and (B) electoral reformers claim proportional representation will greatly increase turnout, swamping the committed nutters with less committed moderates. Probably. Again, Brexit confuses things.

Or, to put it more simply: heartfelt belief that non-white people are inferior is lower than on the continent, but may be on par with the USA. In casual conversation race is also less taboo in Britain than the USA, if only because the whole 'slavery' thing was so much more abstract in the UK, even though the nation was in control of the slave trade for a long time. The median Brit might be more likely than the median American to find racial stereotype funny, whereas said American might well feel moral indignation at the stereotyping. If the American pointed out to the Brit, "That's actually kind of racist," they are more likely to say "Yes, so what? ''I'm'' not racist."

As of 2020, however, the issue of race in the UK and particular issues with racism in the police, has come up again thanks to the international UsefulNotes/BlackLivesMatter protests. The gist is pointing out both that the UK has historically skated over the less pleasant aspects of its imperial past, and that British police forces haven't changed from the late 1990s, when London's Metropolitan Police was infamously described as "institutionally racist" by the Macpherson Report that came about in light of the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. While the unarmed nature of the majority of British police (and the associated training in de-escalation) mean that shootings are far less common, the police have a reputation for picking on minorities and brutality, including deaths in custody. Like in the US, this has also found its way out through sports, with a lot of former and current UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball players coming forward with stories of racism that they have experienced. Since football is arguably the closest thing to a real national religion that the UK has, and football clubs are often deeply integrated into the local community, this is taken more seriously than it might otherwise be.

Beyond the Low Church wing of Anglicanism, there are a variety of even more Protestant denominations who reject the Anglican system as too centralised and/or too much of a compromise with Catholicism, including Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists,[[note]]Who occupied an odd position, as they split off from Low Church Anglicanism in the 18th century and were never quite as marginalised; they were officially just a reformist movement of the Church of England until shortly after the death of one of the founders, John Wesley, in 1791.[[/note]] and a host of other smaller and sometimes short-lived movements. These are collectively known as Nonconformists (as in refusing to "conform" to Anglicanism) or Dissenters, and were persecuted and restricted at times in the past. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dissenters were, like Catholics, generally prohibited from holding public office, attending university, or even having churches in the cities. As time went on, these restrictions were lifted, but not before they built an elaborate network of academies that, unlike their Church of England counterparts, taught practical subjects like applied maths, science, (living) foreign languages, engineering, and business methods.\\

The Treaty of Union (1707) which combined England with Scotland included protection of Scotland's own established church, the Church of Scotland (known in Scots and informal English as "the Kirk"), which is Presbyterian (the Scottish Anglican minority is known as the Scottish Episcopal Church). It has had several acrimonious splits over its history. The stereotype of these folks, in sharp contrast to the Anglicans, is grey-haired, grizzled ministers with hard boots preaching the coming [[DoomyDoomsOfDoom Doom of the world]] and railing against sinful ''fun''. This is seldom true, and almost any instances will be found in the Western Isles or rural areas of the Highlands. Most of these will be part of one of the smaller splinter churches from the Kirk known as the Wee Frees (the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the Association of Free Churches, the Free Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) and so-on), some of which are unrelated and some of which result from the [[WeAreStrugglingTogether traditional and ongoing habit of schisming]] (the most recent was in 2000).\\

The result of all of this is that the Dissenters -- along with some Scots (the hardworking, business-minded Lowlanders who made up the core of the Kirk's membership found the English Dissenters most congenial as brothers in faith and as business partners) -- were absolutely critical in making Britain what it became. As the craftsman Dissenters and Scots quickly discovered, the basic tools of industrialisation were lying all around them, with many key inventions dating back to the Middle Ages: things like techniques for running heavy machinery on power (usually water power, which sent a lot of Dissenters to the hills, where fast-running streams were in ample supply) and processes for making glass that, it turns out, translated easily to metallurgy.\\

With no way to get ahead except starting a business and turning a huge profit, these Dissenters (and their Scottish brethren) started to put old technologies together in ways that changed the world -- all with an eye to making a fast buck from the rich Anglican snobs who disdained them but also seemed to collectively have more money than sense. The origin of the Industrial Revolution is thus peppered with the names of the Dissenters and Scottish Presbyterians who put these pieces together. Significant names in this lot include:

By the beginning of the 19th century, the Dissenters (and the Scots) had turned Britain into an industrial powerhouse, creating the middle bits of the aforementioned class structure (by creating the non-agricultural working class outright and by expanding the middle classes through various direct and indirect means), and establishing themselves as industrialists--in part ''because'' their ancestors had had their other opportunities severely limited (and to a lesser degree, ''because'' the Anglican upper crust laughed at them). So, thank you, C of E, we guess?[[note]]One last thing with Quakers: the three great chocolate companies of England, Cadbury's, Rowntree's, and Fry's, were all founded by Quakers; John Sentamu, archbishop of York since 2005 (York being the major centre of British chocolate manufacturing), has jokingly referred to the founders as the "Chocolate Trinity."[[/note]]
Since the 1990s or so there has been a further shift in British Christianity, with the appearance of many small Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. The most visible of these have strong US and African influences, which largely appeal to people of African and Afro-Caribbean ethnic background, but there are plenty of white-majority and homegrown ones as well. These are one of the fastest-growing elements of the British Christian scene, but have sometimes come into conflict with the authorities over claims of miraculous healing, and more darkly cases of exorcism of allegedly demon-possessed people, which have occasionally tipped over into child abuse.

!Northern vs Southern England

Another definition of the North is where people stop pronouncing "bath" as "baaahth". Strange to some, this has its problems as many in UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry also use the "Northern" pronunciation. This confusion and debate might be due to most political, business and media events largely happening in London, though one of the others may have hit upon something in the North-East and South-West divide, nothing seems to happen in the east either, so the Creator/{{BBC}} don't often call round to check up on the North-East. Another reason is that a lot of Southerners claim to be Northern because of the stereotype that Northerners are working-class miners from kitchen-sink dramas (which basically makes you sound both really hard and a victim of domestic abuse, the Top Trump of My Upbringing Was More Difficult than Yours), so if their dad's from Nottingham they'll say they're Northern, even if they only go at the Easter Holidays.

Historically, the mapping of region and accent ''could'' go back to the map of the Anglo-Saxon/Viking divide when the two groups came to an accord and ultimately settled England over the period between the withdrawal of the Roman Empire and the unification of England in the 10th century. The name 'Mercia' is still occasionally used as a romantic alternative to 'UsefulNotes/TheMidlands', as is Wessex occasionally invoked for UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry excluding UsefulNotes/{{Cornwall}}, possibly after being resurrected as an idea by Thomas Hardy (and Prince Edward is earl of it, despite it no longer existing in any meaningful sense).[[note]]He got the ill-defined earldom because his mother, then Queen UsefulNotes/ElizabethII, wanted him to be the duke of Edinburgh when his father, who then held the title, had passed; by the time Prince Edward married, Prince Philip was 78, and nobody expected him to live well into his nineties. Prince Edward needed to have a title upon marriage, though, and so was given a random earldom -- apparently inspired by the title of Creator/ColinFirth's character in ''Film/ShakespeareInLove'', which Prince Edward apparently liked -- to use while he waited for his father to die.[[/note]] These borders were never precisely mapped, though (and they just ignore parts like some of the Pennines, which had land not worth the trouble of claiming) -- the best guess is the etymological origin of the names of landmarks (though border shifts could also result in the old name -- sometimes just the plain noun -- having the new noun tagged onto it, such as Torpenhow Hill in Cumbria: [[ShapedLikeItself Hillhillhill Hill]]).

Ironically, the last Stuart king (James II and VII) ''was'' a Catholic, which is why they got rid of him and replaced him with his very Protestant daughter, Mary II. Despite this, there remained certain pockets of Catholicism in Britain; leaving out Ireland, there was also the Scottish Highlands, as well as some parts of the North. Additionally, certain aristocratic families became firmly associated with Catholicism over the centuries, to the point where all of society ''expected'' them to be "recusant" (the legal term for English Catholics back then). Particularly notable are the Howard family, the main line of which, being the Dukes of Norfolk, were the seniormost non-royal aristocrats in the country and held certain hereditary roles in the government which they never lost[[note]]Well, they were occasionally stripped of their positions during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James I, plus the Commonwealth period, but they were always restored relatively shortly thereafter and UsefulNotes/CharlesII restored them permanently.[[/note]] despite being Catholic. At a certain point, it became virtually unthinkable for the Duke of Norfolk ''not'' to be Catholic (it sort of became one of those utterly incomprehensible institutions of which the British are so fond).[[note]]Incidentally, this is what the Dowager Countess of Grantham in ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' was referring to in series 3 when she mentioned how the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk was both "a dear friend" and "more Catholic than the Pope". Even aggressively "normal" Protestant nobs like the Crawleys were willing to overlook a family's Catholicism if there was some kind of respectable explanation for it.[[/note]](Interestingly, as one of the Duke of Norfolk's honorific titles is "Earl Marshal", a post whose chief responsibilities include organising the [[AwesomeMomentOfCrowning coronation of the monarch]], this means that a Catholic has been responsible for organising the distinctly Protestant coronation ceremony[[note]]The ceremony does have deep roots in England's Catholic era, with the earliest edition of the liturgy dating from the crowning of Edgar the Peaceful in the 10th century, but there are several distinctly Protestant aspects of the ceremony, to say nothing of the fact that it takes place in Westminster Abbey, which belongs to the Church of England.[[/note]] for over 300 years.)\\

An important note to begin with. When Britons call themselves or other people "Asian", they are usually referring to someone from South Asia, not East Asia as is the American default assumption. For many years ethnicity monitoring questions on government forms actually gave "Asian" and "Chinese" as different options! [[note]] though as of the 2020s Chinese is now included in the Asian category [[/note]] Partly this is simply because most ethnically Asian people in Britain are of Indian/UsefulNotes/{{Pakistan}}i/UsefulNotes/{{Bangladesh}}i/UsefulNotes/{{Sri Lanka}}n origin, but it's also because people from the other three countries in that region get upset for good reason if they're described as "Indian". Another thing to note in rare informal context West Asians (middle easterners) also get called Asian in the UK. Whilst Also, there's some sensitivity about referring to people as "Pakistani" because of the common British use of the abbreviation "Paki" as a racist insult as extreme and explosive as the word "Nigger" is in the USA. In fact while Paki is deriverative of Pakistan, it is used as a racist slur towards brown skinned Muslims, but also other South Asians, West Asians and North Africans. Famous people who have been victims of this include Zayn Malik (Former Muslim half Pakistani), Jade Thirwall (non-muslim with Egyptian/Yemeni heritage [[note]] she speaks fondlt of her Yemeni Muslim grandfather however [[/note]]) and Freddie Mercury (born Farroukh Bulsara a British Indian Zoroastrian of Parsi ethnicity). Finally, whatever you do, don't refer to British Black people as African-American, as you will be mocked mercilessly by all and sundry. Also the Black community in the UK is mostly split between Black Africans and Black Caribbeans. So a British Black person being asked if they are from the Caribbeans or Africa is normal.

Britain is still a mostly white country (particularly outside the cities), with 80.5% of the population being White British, 1% White UsefulNotes/{{Ir|eland}}ish and 4.4% White (Other) according to the 2011 census.[[note]]This is just for England and UsefulNotes/{{Wales}}, not the whole of the UK, although frankly UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}} and UsefulNotes/NorthernIreland--with only about 12% of the population--can't really shift the numbers much, and Scotland's cities are diverse enough that although Scotland is pretty White, it's not a total whitewash.[[/note]] This is a pretty rapid and recent change; the 1991 census listed 94.1% of the population as White British.

Unsurprisingly, the proportion varies greatly around the country with Northern Ireland having under 2 per cent of its population being non-white (In Northern Ireland, the census doesn't differentiate between White Irish and White British, for [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles obvious reasons]]). The Irish have migrated in large numbers to Britain for centuries; when the Irish economy was strong (referred to as 'the Celtic Tiger', in reference to the 'Asian Tigers' of the same time period), this tailed off, but after [[TheNewTens the Irish economy went down the drain]], young Irish have been moving to Britain in quantity again (and, when they find that Britain isn't doing much better, a lot of them end up going to [[UsefulNotes/MeltingPot the US]] -- most commonly the East Coast, particularly UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity and UsefulNotes/{{Boston}}, although UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} is also popular).

* '''Afro/Caribbean blacks:''' At least 3% of the population -- split fairly evenly (11:18) between Caribbean (from the British West Indies) and African (from the African nations of the former UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire) respectively. In the last 10 years the number of black African people in Britain has overtaken the number from the Caribbean. Although [[OlderThanTheyThink present in miniscule numbers]] since at least the [[TheCavalierYears 17th and 18th century]], if not Roman times. The Caribbean variety first arrived in the 1950s and are entering third-generation status whilst the African ones tend to be more recent immigrants. Interracial relationships amongst Afro-Caribbeans and whites are now so common that people of Afro-Caribbean descent are expected to dwindle to almost none as a distinct group.
* '''South Asian:''' At least 5% of the population -- those from the former [[UsefulNotes/TheRaj British India]], split between Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and those who fled from UsefulNotes/IdiAmin's UsefulNotes/{{Uganda}} and stayed. Most of these people largely arrived in the 1970s, although communities had already been established in Victorian times. The second and third are mostly Muslim. This has led to some tensions in British society -- with home-grown terrorism, most notably the 7/7 and London Bridge/Borough Market terrorist attacks, carried out by British-born Muslims.

One could write a rather interesting comparative history of racism in the US and UK. The UK never had the system of legalised segregation that the US had in its southern states, but there was a considerable amount of informal discrimination. Originally, the British Empire was one of the largest sources of slave traders, but they also banned slavery much earlier than the United States did and via the West Africa Squadron (which at one point included approximately a quarter of the Royal Navy), spent much of the 19th century taking a very hardline approach to traders who persisted... including non-British traders who weren't actually bound by British law. This is rightly lauded as one of the great humanitarian triumphs as the Royal Navy, though it should also be noted that the motives weren't entirely altruistic. For one thing, the law gave the Navy an excuse to poke around any ship they wanted to, and enforce ''de facto'' British control of the Atlantic. For another, it gave Britain a leg up on slavery-based economic rivals by cutting off their labour supply.

This resurgence has grown -- to an extent (like all things involving Brexit, it's been hideously complicated) -- the longer the Brexit process has been drawn out, with the rise of the single-issue 'Brexit Party', which seeks to ensure Brexit and otherwise has no discernible policies, with the traditionally centre-right Conservative Party tacking hard to the Islamophobic right to try and avoid haemorrhaging more votes. This is not helped by the former Conservative Party Leader and Prime Minister Boris Johnson having a long-standing history of racism and bigotry, making comments like watermelon smiles, claiming women in burkhas looks like letterboxes or bank robbers, and even writing a book, ''72 Virgins'', which referred to people of Jewish descent fiddling election results.

However, not only has opposition to Brexit risen sharply, particularly among younger voters, leading to a partial renaissance of the Liberal Democrats and of the pro-EU left, there's also pro-Brexit support on the far left (which hates the EU less for letting in all the foreigners, but for being a multinational capitalistic institution -- though, again, there's overlap with the far right), which also has an unfortunate history of anti-Semitism.[[note]]It is generally accepted that there was a problem with anti-semitism in the Labour Party, and that the party was reluctant to accept or seriously investigate it, but that it was nowhere near as widespread as portrayed, along with the fact the media was very happy to give a pass to people from rival political parties being arguably more anti-semitic, including Boris Johnson who had written a book which engaged in blatant anti-semitic stereotyping.[[/note]]

Or, to put it more simply: heartfelt belief that non-white people are inferior is lower than on the continent, but may be on par with the USA. In casual conversation race is also less taboo in Britain than the USA, if only because the whole 'slavery' thing was so much more abstract in the UK, even though the nation was in control of the slave trade for a long time. The average Brit is more likely than an American to find racial stereotype funny, whereas said American might well feel moral indignation at the stereotyping. If the American pointed out to the Brit, "That's actually kinda racist," they are more likely to say "Yes, so what? ''I'm'' not racist."

As of 2020, however, the issue of race in the UK and particular issues with racism in the police, has come up again thanks to the international Black Lives Matter protests. The gist is pointing out both that the UK has historically skated over the less pleasant aspects of its imperial past, and that British police forces haven't changed from the late 90s, when London's Metropolitan police was infamously described as "institutionally racist" by the Macpherson Report that came about in light of the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. While the unarmed nature of the majority of British police (and the associated training in de-escalation) mean that shootings are far less common, the police have a reputation for picking on minorities and brutality, including deaths in custody. Like in the US, this has also found its way out through sports, with a lot of former and current UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball players coming forward with stories of racism that they have experienced. Since football is arguably the closest thing to a real national religion that the UK has, and football clubs are often deeply integrated into the local community, this is taken more seriously than it might otherwise be.

Needless to say, this is the subject of heated debate, but like in the US, statues of figures are being toppled (such as one of 17th century slave trader and philanthropist Edward Colston, which was dumped in Bristol harbour) and defaced (such as one of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square - Churchill was very pro-Empire and is heavily criticised for his at best apathetic response to the Bengal Famine of 1943 that killed c. 3 million Indians).

Henry's daughter, [[UsefulNotes/MaryTudor Mary I]] (who inherited when Edward died unmarried aged 15), converted the country back to Catholicism, and executed numerous Protestants, hence being known as Bloody Mary. However, she was childless and died only a few years after taking the throne, so her Protestant half-sister, UsefulNotes/ElizabethI, converted it back to Protestantism. However, the ever-pragmatic Elizabeth made at least a token effort not to offend Catholic Europe in her reconversion, retaining a lot of Catholic structure, ritual, and doctrine. This plus the whole being on an island thing helped keep England largely out of the Continental Wars of Religion.[[note]]The only significant challenge by a Catholic power to Elizabeth's rule was the Spanish Armada incident, and religious differences were mostly icing on the cake for King Philip: the late Queen Mary had been his wife, and during her reign he had been declared King of England ''jure uxoris''. He thus felt he should have gotten the English throne when she died. It's entirely possible that he would have attacked England whether it was Protestant or Catholic unless Elizabeth firmly committed England to an alliance with Spain (which the ever-strategic and fiercely independent Elizabeth would never do, no matter her religious persuasion).[[/note]]\\

Ironically, the last Stuart king (James II and VII) ''was'' a Catholic, which is why they got rid of him and replaced him with his very Protestant daughter, Mary II. Despite this, there remained certain pockets of Catholicism in Britain; leaving out Ireland, there was also the Scottish Highlands, as well as some parts of the North. Additionally, certain aristocratic families became firmly associated with Catholicism over the centuries, to the point where all of society ''expected'' them to be "recusant" (the legal term for English Catholics back then). Particularly notable are the Howard family, the main line of which, being the Dukes of Norfolk, were the seniormost non-royal aristocrats in the country and held certain hereditary roles in the government which they never lost[[note]]Well, they were occasionally stripped of their positions during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James I, plus the Commonwealth period, but they were always restored relatively shortly thereafter and UsefulNotes/CharlesII restored them permanently.[[/note]] despite being Catholic. At a certain point, it became virtually unthinkable for the Duke of Norfolk ''not'' to be Catholic (it sort of became one of those utterly incomprehensible institutions of which the British are so fond).[[note]]Incidentally, this is what the Dowager Countess of Grantham in ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' was referring to in Series 3 when she mentioned how the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk was both "a dear friend" and "more Catholic than the Pope". Even aggressively "normal" Protestant nobs like the Crawleys were willing to overlook a family's Catholicism if there was some kind of respectable explanation for it.[[/note]](Interestingly, as one of the Duke of Norfolk's honorific titles is "Earl Marshal", a post whose chief responsibilities include organising the [[AwesomeMomentOfCrowning coronation of the monarch]], this means that a Catholic has been responsible for organising the distinctly Protestant coronation ceremony[[note]]The ceremony does have deep roots in England's Catholic era, with the earliest edition of the liturgy dating from the crowning of Edgar the Peaceful in the 10th century, but there are several distinctly Protestant aspects of the ceremony, to say nothing of the fact that it takes place in Westminster Abbey, which belongs to the Church of England.[[/note]] for over 300 years.)\\

Most of the anti-Catholic laws were repealed in the early 19th century, but there is one notable exception -- if a member of the Royal Family were to become a Catholic or (until 2013) marry one, they are barred from ascending to the throne. In the 19th century, there was a secret society called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit-Cat_Club the Kit-Kat Club]] dedicated to ensuring the future heirs to the kingdom were all Protestant. (It either no longer exists, [[{{Pun}} or is having a break.]]) Lingering anti-Catholic feeling may have contributed to UsefulNotes/TonyBlair not formally converting to Catholicism until he had stood down as PM in 2007, although it was more likely simply his not wishing to make a big deal over his level of religious belief, as profession of and the influence of such tends to be more subdued than in the US even with pious politicians. As Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, inspiration for [[Series/TheThickOfIt Malcolm Tucker]], said when Blair was questioned on his faith, "we don't do God." For instance, when UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson may have technically converted to Catholicism to marry his latest wife, Carrie Johnson, in 2021, absolutely no one cared - though that might have been down to the probably correct suspicion that religion meant even less to the famously irreverent and opportunistic Johnson (who was baptised a Catholic) than marriage vows.\\

This was far worse in Ireland and continues to have an impact in UsefulNotes/NorthernIreland, and to a lesser extent in Glasgow, where there is a large population of Irish descent.

Oh yes, business methods: Since the Dissenters were ''not'' prohibited from becoming craftsmen, and their religions tended not to frown upon and often even encouraged the pursuit of material success, they developed their crafts into industry--a field that Anglicans (particularly High Church Tories) were often too high-and-mighty to touch. Incidentally, these academies, especially the Quaker ones, are very often to this day among the most prestigious secondary schools in Britain outside of the traditional public schools.[[note]]They also inspired their brethren in America to establish similar academies, which are similarly often among the most prestigious schools in their region--witness the success of Sidwell Friends School in UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC, which has educated the sons and daughters of several American presidents--but only two who actually had Quaker connections (UsefulNotes/RichardNixon's daughters Tricia and Julie, who attended while Nixon was vice president from 1953 to 1961; Nixon was one of only two Quaker presidents. For the record, the children of the other Quaker president, UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover, remained in California when he first took federal office in the 1910s and 20s, and were in their 20s by the time he became President in 1929).[[/note]]\\

Since the 1990s or so there has been a further shift in British Christianity, with the appearance of many small Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. The most visible of these have strong US and African influences, which largely appeal to people of African and Afro-Caribbean ethnic background, but there are plenty of white-majority and home-grown ones as well. These are one of the fastest-growing elements of the British Christian scene, but have sometimes come into conflict with the authorities over claims of miraculous healing, and more darkly cases of exorcism of allegedly demon-possessed people, which have occasionally tipped over into child abuse.

Jews have a long but sometimes unhappy history in Britain, with discrimination against them being common during the Middle Ages, including occasional bloody pogroms. There was ultimately the Edict of Explusion of 1290, where all the Jews in England were expelled -- this was not formally overturned until 1656 by UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell, who it turns out wasn't as harsh a Puritan as people sometimes think. (Though in fairness letting the Jews back in was inspired by millenarianism. Why? Ask an eschatologist.)[[note]]Fun fact: many Jews who came to England as a result were Sephardic Jews (Jewish people from Spain and to a lesser extent Portugal) and brought with them a recipe for ''pescado frito'': fillets of fish, battered and deep-fried in oil, a perfect meal for the Sabbath which you could prepare on Friday afternoon to eat for lunch on Saturday, as it would keep for a whole day and still be crisp and tasty. The English gradually came to [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff rather like this fried fish]]. Centuries later, some English person put the frying of fish together with the frying of potatoes, and boom! You have a British institution.[[/note]] By 1874, Britain had an ethnically Jewish prime minister, UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli. (Religiously he was Christian -- in fact he'd become an MP many years before it became legal for observant Jews to hold public office -- but this was still a big deal, and he was proud of it.) Several Jewish Britons participated in the aforementioned Industrial Revolutionary intellectual ferment, chief among them David Ricardo--a descendant of Portuguese Jews who made great contributions to the science of economics, building on what the (Scottish) Adam Smith had started.\\\

One clear division that can be seen in the UK is the divide between the "North" of England and the "South". The precise divide is debated (common ones are the Watford Gap Service Station in Northamptonshire[[note]]not to be confused with the town of Watford, much further south in Hertfordshire[[/note]], the most northerly point where one can buy the ''Evening Standard'' [Oxford], and ''anywhere outside the M25''), but the 1983 general election, where Labour won only three seats south of Birmingham outside of Greater London gives you a good hint.

It is also important to note that the line of the north-south divide does ''not'' run east-west, but rather North-East/South-West: somewhere around Bristol Channel-The Wash is one (not ''too'' controversial) common location.

The division also depends on where you stand. For people in London, most of England may belong to "the North" (or "Mordor"), but the people of Yorkshire or Lancashire might refer to inhabitants of Birmingham, Nottingham or Derby as being in the West and East Midlands. And most people in the East and West Midlands would think of themselves as Midlanders, rather than Northerners or Southerners.

Historically, the mapping of region and accent ''could'' go back to the map of the Anglo-Saxon/Viking divide when the two groups came to an accord and ultimately settled England over the period between the withdrawal of the Roman Empire and the unification of England in the 10th century. The name 'Mercia' is still occasionally used as a romantic alternative to 'UsefulNotes/TheMidlands', as is Wessex occasionally invoked for UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry excluding UsefulNotes/{{Cornwall}}, possibly after being resurrected as an idea by Thomas Hardy (and Prince Edward is earl of it, despite it no longer existing in any meaningful sense).[[note]]He got the ill-defined earldom because his mother, then Queen UsefulNotes/ElizabethII, wanted him to be the duke of Edinburgh when his father, who then held the title, had passed; by the time Prince Edward married, Prince Philip was 78, and nobody expected him to live well into his nineties. Prince Edward needed to have a title upon marriage, though, and so was given a random earldom -- apparently inspired by the title of Creator/ColinFirth's character in ''Film/ShakespeareInLove'', which Prince Edward apparently liked -- to use while he waited for his father to die.[[/note]] These borders were never precisely mapped, though (and they just ignore parts like some of the Pennines, which had land not worth the trouble of claiming)- the best guess is the etymological origin of the names of landmarks (though border shifts could also result in the old name -- sometimes just the plain noun -- having the new noun tagged onto it, such as Torpenhow Hill in Cumbria: [[ShapedLikeItself Hillhillhill Hill]]).

See also UsefulNotes/BritishAccents for more accented information, and BritainIsOnlyLondon (Real Life) for more information on how the North-South divide has played out in real life.

Ironically, the last Stuart king (James II and VII) ''was'' a Catholic, which is why they got rid of him and replaced him with his very Protestant daughter, Mary II. Despite this, there remained certain pockets of Catholicism in Britain; leaving out Ireland, there was also the Scottish Highlands, as well as some parts of the North. Additionally, certain aristocratic families became firmly associated with Catholicism over the centuries, to the point where all of society ''expected'' them to be "recusant" (the legal term for English Catholics back then). Particularly notable are the Howard family, the main line of which, being the Dukes of Norfolk, were the seniormost non-royal aristocrats in the country and held certain hereditary roles in the government which they never lost[[note]]Well, they were occasionally stripped of their positions during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James I, plus the Commonwealth period, but they were always restored relatively shortly thereafter and UsefulNotes/CharlesII restored them permanently.[[/note]] despite being Catholic. At a certain point, it became virtually unthinkable for the Duke of Norfolk ''not'' to be Catholic (it sort of became one of those utterly incomprehensible institutions of which the British are so fond).[[note]]Incidentally, this is what the Dowager Countess of Grantham in ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' was referring to in Series 3 when she mentioned how the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk was both "a dear friend" and "more Catholic than the Pope". Even aggressively "normal" Protestant nobs like the Crawleys were willing to overlook a family's Catholicism if there was some kind of respectable explanation for it.[[/note]]\\ (Interestingly, as one of the Duke of Norfolk's honorific titles is "Earl Marshal", a post whose chief responsibilities include organising the [[AwesomeMomentOfCrowning coronation of the monarch]], this means that a Catholic has been responsible for organising the distinctly Protestant coronation ceremony[[note]]The ceremony does have deep roots in England's Catholic era, with the earliest edition of the liturgy dating from the crowning of Edgar the Peaceful in the 10th century, but there are several distinctly Protestant aspects of the ceremony, to say nothing of the fact that it takes place in Westminster Abbey, which belongs to the Church of England.[[/note]] for over 300 years.)

Ironically, the last Stuart king (James II and VII) ''was'' a Catholic, which is why they got rid of him and replaced him with his very Protestant daughter, Mary II. Despite this, there remained certain pockets of Catholicism in Britain; leaving out Ireland, there was also the Scottish Highlands, as well as some parts of the North. Additionally, certain aristocratic families became firmly associated with Catholicism over the centuries, to the point where all of society ''expected'' them to be "recusant" (the legal term for English Catholics back then). Particularly notable are the Howard family, the main line of which, being the Dukes of Norfolk, were the seniormost non-royal aristocrats in the country and held certain hereditary roles in the government which they never lost[[note]]Well, they were occasionally stripped of their positions during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James I, plus the Commonwealth period, but they were always restored relatively shortly thereafter and UsefulNotes/CharlesII restored them permanently.[[/note]] despite being Catholic. At a certain point, it became virtually unthinkable for the Duke of Norfolk ''not'' to be Catholic (it sort of became one of those utterly incomprehensible institutions of which the British are so fond).[[note]]Incidentally, this is what the Dowager Countess of Grantham in ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' was referring to in Series 3 when she mentioned how the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk was both "a dear friend" and "more Catholic than the Pope". Even aggressively "normal" Protestant nobs like the Crawleys were willing to overlook a family's Catholicism if there was some kind of respectable explanation for it.[[/note]]\\

Ironically, the last Stuart king (James II and VII) ''was'' a Catholic, which is why they got rid of him and replaced him with his very Protestant daughter, Mary II. Despite this, there remained certain pockets of Catholicism in Britain; leaving out Ireland, there was also the Scottish Highlands, as well as some parts of the North. Additionally, certain aristocratic families became firmly associated with Catholicism over the centuries, to the point where all of society ''expected'' them to be "recusant" (the legal term for English Catholics back then). Particularly notable are the Howard family, the main line of which, being the Dukes of Norfolk, were the seniormost non-royal aristocrats in the country and held certain hereditary roles in the government which they never lost[[note]]Well, they were occasionally stripped of their positions during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James I, plus the Commonwealth period, but they were always restored relatively shortly thereafter and UsefulNotes/CharlesII restored them permanently.[[/note]] despite being Catholic. At a certain point, it became virtually unthinkable for the Duke of Norfolk ''not'' to be Catholic (it sort of became one of those utterly incomprehensible institutions of which the British are so fond).[[note]]Incidentally, this is what the Dowager Countess of Grantham in ''Series/DowntonAbbey'' was referring to in Series 3 when she mentioned how the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk was both "a dear friend" and "more Catholic than the Pope".[[/note]]\\

Ironically, the last Stuart king (James II and VII) ''was'' a Catholic, which is why they got rid of him and replaced him with his very Protestant daughter, Mary II. Despite this, there remained certain pockets of Catholicism in Britain; leaving out Ireland, there was also the Scottish Highlands, as well as some parts of the North. Additionally, certain aristocratic families became firmly associated with Catholicism over the centuries, to the point where all of society ''expected'' them to be "recusant" (the legal term for English Catholics back then). Particularly notable are the Howard family, the main line of which, being the Dukes of Norfolk, were the seniormost non-royal aristocrats in the country and held certain hereditary roles in the government which they never lost[[note]]Well, they were occasionally stripped of their positions during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James I, plus the Commonwealth period, but they were always restored relatively shortly thereafter and UsefulNotes/CharlesII restored them permanently.[[/note]] despite being Catholic. At a certain point, it became virtually unthinkable for the Duke of Norfolk ''not'' to be Catholic (it sort of became one of those utterly incomprehensible institutions of which the British are so fond).\\

An important note to begin with. When Britons call themselves or other people "Asian", they are usually referring to someone from South Asia, not East Asia as is the American default assumption. For many years ethnicity monitoring questions on government forms actually gave "Asian" and "Chinese" as different options! [[note]] though as of the 2020s Chinese is now included in the Asian category [[/note]] Partly this is simply because most ethnically Asian people in Britain are of Indian/UsefulNotes/{{Pakistan}}i/UsefulNotes/{{Bangladesh}}i/UsefulNotes/{{Sri Lanka}}n origin, but it's also because people from the other three countries in that region get upset for good reason if they're described as "Indian". Another thing to note in rare informal context West Asians (middle easterners) also get called Asian in the UK. Whilst Also, there's some sensitivity about referring to people as "Pakistani" because of the common British use of the abbreviation "Paki" as a racist insult as extreme and explosive as the word "Nigger" is in the USA. In fact while Paki is deriverative of Pakistan, it is used as a racist slur towards brown skinned Muslims, but also other South Asians, West Asians and North Africans. Famous people who have been victims of this include Zayn Malik (Former Muslim half Pakistani), Jade Thirwall (non-muslim with Egyptian/Yemeni heritage [[note]] she speaks fondlt of her Yemeni Muslim grandfather however [[/note]]) and Freddie Mercury (born Farroukh Bulsara a British Indian Zoroastrian of Parsi ethnicity). Finally, whatever you do, don't refer to British Black people as [[WeAllLiveInAmerica African-American]], as you will be mocked mercilessly by all and sundry. Also the Black community in the UK is mostly split between Black Africans and Black Caribbeans. So a British Black person being asked if they are from the Caribbeans or Africa is normal.

However, not only has opposition to Brexit risen sharply, particularly among younger voters, leading to a partial renaissance of the Liberal Democrats and of the pro-EU left, there's also pro-Brexit support on the far left (which hates the EU less for letting in all the foreigners, but for being a multinational capitalistic institution -- though, again, there's overlap with the far right), which also has an unfortunate history of anti-Semitism.[[note]] The Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement applies: it is generally accepted that there was a problem with anti-semitism in the Labour Party, and that the party was reluctant to accept or seriously investigate it, but that it was nowhere near as widespread as portrayed, along with the fact the media was very happy to give a pass to people from rival political parties being arguably more anti-semitic, including Boris Johnson who had written a book which engaged in blatant anti-semitic stereotyping.[[/note]]

Historically, the mapping of region and accent ''could'' go back to the map of the Anglo-Saxon/Viking divide when the two groups came to an accord and ultimately settled England over the period between the withdrawal of the Roman Empire and the unification of England in the 10th century. The name 'Mercia' is still occasionally used as a romantic alternative to 'UsefulNotes/TheMidlands', as is Wessex occasionally invoked for UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry excluding UsefulNotes/{{Cornwall}}, possibly after being resurrected as an idea by Thomas Hardy (and Prince Edward is earl of it, despite it no longer existing in any meaningful sense).[[note]]He got the ill-defined earldom because [[UsefulNotes/HMTheQueen his Mama]] wanted him to be the duke of Edinburgh when his father, who currently holds the title, had passed; by the time Prince Edward married, Prince Philip was 78, and nobody expected him to live well into his nineties. Prince Edward needed to have a title upon marriage, though, and so was given a random earldom -- apparently inspired by the title of Creator/ColinFirth's character in ''Film/ShakespeareInLove'', which Prince Edward apparently liked -- to use while he waited for his father to die.[[/note]] These borders were never precisely mapped, though (and they just ignore parts like some of the Pennines, which had land not worth the trouble of claiming)- the best guess is the etymological origin of the names of landmarks (though border shifts could also result in the old name -- sometimes just the plain noun -- having the new noun tagged onto it, such as Torpenhow Hill in Cumbria: [[ShapedLikeItself Hillhillhill Hill]]).

An important note to begin with. When Britons call themselves or other people "Asian", they are usually referring to someone from the UsefulNotes/{{India}}n sub-continent, not East Asia as is the American default assumption. For many years ethnicity monitoring questions on government forms actually gave "Asian" and "Chinese" as different options! Partly this is simply because most ethnically Asian people in Britain are of Indian/UsefulNotes/{{Pakistan}}i/UsefulNotes/{{Bangladesh}}i/UsefulNotes/{{Sri Lanka}}n origin, but it's also because people from the other three countries in that region get upset for good reason if they're described as "Indian". Also, there's some sensitivity about referring to people as "Pakistani" because of the common British use of the abbreviation "Paki" as a racist insult as extreme and explosive as the word "Nigger" is in the USA. Finally, whatever you do, don't refer to black British people as [[WeAllLiveInAmerica African-American]], as you will be mocked mercilessly by all and sundry.

This resurgence has grown -- to an extent (like all things involving Brexit, it's been hideously complicated) -- the longer the Brexit process has been drawn out, with the rise of the single-issue 'Brexit Party', which seeks to ensure Brexit and otherwise has no discernible policies, with the traditionally centre-right Conservative Party tacking hard to the Islamophobic right to try and avoid haemorrhaging more votes. This is not helped by the current Conservative Party Leader and Prime Minister Boris Johnson having a long-standing history of racism and bigotry, making comments like watermelon smiles, claiming women in burkhas looks like letterboxes or bank robbers, and even writing a book 72 Virgins which referred to people of Jewish descent fiddling election results.

* William Murdoch: Another Scottish Presbyterian and assistant to Watt -- later a partner in his firm -- who capitalised on an observation by a long-forgotten Scottish earl and developed the first practical technique for using coal gas as a light source, allowing factories to be fully lit through the night at low cost, meaning that he's responsible for the 24-hour factory, and thus the night shift, and therefore shift work--in other words, working by the clock, rather than the Sun or your own sleep cycle. If you work a job where you come in at a certain time and leave at a certain time, you more or less have Murdoch to thank--or curse. In fairness, gas light meant that the streets were soon fully lit and safe to walk by night.

Because the Church of England's split from Rome was because of the King's sex life rather than popular demand, the Anglican Church has always had a rather wider range of internal doctrinal difference than most Christian denominations. The traditional split, to simplify things considerably, has been between the Anglo-Catholics, or "High Church", who think that just because you reject the authority of the Pope doesn't mean you can't continue to substantially accept Catholic doctrines and practices, and the Evangelicals, or "Low Church", who are fully Protestant in their doctrines and practices. The UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar was partly a religious conflict, with the High Church siding predominantly with the King and the Low Church with Parliament. Between these there has historically been a third "Broad Church" position (also called "Latitudinarian" among people overly fond of fancy-sounding words) which doesn't see what the fuss is about and mixes and matches between High and Low Church based on what they find resonant or convenient. Since the nineteenth century another element has been added in the shape of the Modernist/Liberal wing. These, stereotypically, are the kind of people who hold yoga sessions in the church hall, publicly doubt the bodily Resurrection, and want to be able to hold same-sex marriages.\\

Catholics were subjected to organised discrimination, such as the Disenfranchising Act 1727 in Ireland, barring all of them from voting. This also applied to other "non-conformists", such as the "Clarendon Code" (though Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon and chief minister, didn't write them or fully approve of them). These effectively barred them from holding public offices.
Henry's daughter, [[UsefulNotes/MaryTudor Mary I]] (who inherited when Edward died unmarried aged 15), converted the country back to Catholicism, and executed numerous Protestants, hence being known as Bloody Mary. However, she was childless and died only a few years after taking the throne, so her Protestant half-sister, UsefulNotes/ElizabethI, converted it back to Protestantism. However, the ever-pragmatic Elizabeth made at least a token effort not to offend Catholic Europe in her reconversion, retaining a lot of Catholic structure, ritual, and doctrine. This plus the whole being on an island thing helped keep England largely out of the Continental Wars of Religion.[[note]]The only significant challenge by a Catholic power to Elizabeth's rule was the Spanish Armada incident, and religious differences were mostly icing on the cake for King Philip: the late Queen Mary had been his wife, and during her reign he had been declared King of England ''jure uxoris''. He thus felt he should have gotten the English throne when she died. It's entirely possible that he would have attacked England whether it was Protestant or Catholic unless Elizabeth firmly committed England to an alliance with Spain (which the ever-strategic and fiercely independent Elizabeth would never do, no matter her religious persuasion).[[/note]]
During the reign of [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfStuart the Stuarts]], there was a kind of RedScare against Catholics, thanks to the scaremongering tactics of Titus Oates and others -- people believed that there was a widespread conspiracy to overthrow the British monarchy and forcibly convert all Britons to Catholicism. It got so bad that people were afraid to go out to the theatre in case the Catholics got them. Laws were put in place to make sure Catholics could never have power in Britain again.
Ironically, the last Stuart king (James II and VII) ''was'' a Catholic, which is why they got rid of him and replaced him with his very Protestant daughter, Mary II. Despite this, there remained certain pockets of Catholicism in Britain; leaving out Ireland, there was also the Scottish Highlands, as well as some parts of the North. Additionally, certain aristocratic families became firmly associated with Catholicism over the centuries, to the point where all of society ''expected'' them to be "recusant" (the legal term for English Catholics back then). Particularly notable are the Howard family, the main line of which, being the Dukes of Norfolk, were the seniormost non-royal aristocrats in the country and held certain hereditary roles in the government which they never lost[[note]]Well, they were occasionally stripped of their positions during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James I, plus the Commonwealth period, but they were always restored relatively shortly thereafter and UsefulNotes/CharlesII restored them permanently.[[/note]] despite being Catholic. At a certain point, it became virtually unthinkable for the Duke of Norfolk ''not'' to be Catholic (it sort of became one of those utterly incomprehensible institutions of which the British are so fond).
Most of the anti-Catholic laws were repealed in the early 19th century, but there is one notable exception -- if a member of the Royal Family were to become a Catholic or (until 2013) marry one, they are barred from ascending to the throne. In the 19th century, there was a secret society called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit-Cat_Club the Kit-Kat Club]] dedicated to ensuring the future heirs to the kingdom were all Protestant. (It either no longer exists, [[{{Pun}} or is having a break.]]) Lingering anti-Catholic feeling may have contributed to UsefulNotes/TonyBlair not formally converting to Catholicism until he had stood down as PM in 2007, although it was more likely simply his not wishing to make a big deal over his level of religious belief, as profession of and the influence of such tends to be more subdued than in the US even with pious politicians. As Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, inspiration for [[Series/TheThickOfIt Malcolm Tucker]], said when Blair was questioned on his faith, "we don't do God." For instance, when UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson may have technically converted to Catholicism to marry his latest wife, Carrie Johnson, in 2021, absolutely no one cared - though that might have been down to the probably correct suspicion that religion meant even less to the famously irreverent and opportunistic Johnson (who was baptised a Catholic) than marriage vows.
This was far worse in Ireland and continues to have an impact in UsefulNotes/NorthernIreland, and to a lesser extent in Glasgow, where there is a large population of Irish descent.

!!Church of England today
Because the Church of England's split from Rome was because of the King's sex life rather than popular demand, the Anglican Church has always had a rather wider range of internal doctrinal difference than most Christian denominations. The traditional split, to simplify things considerably, has been between the Anglo-Catholics, or "High Church", who think that just because you reject the authority of the Pope doesn't mean you can't continue to substantially accept Catholic doctrines and practices, and the Evangelicals, or "Low Church", who are fully Protestant in their doctrines and practices. The UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar was partly a religious conflict, with the High Church siding predominantly with the King and the Low Church with Parliament. Between these there has historically been a third "Broad Church" position (also called "Latitudinarian" among people overly fond of fancy-sounding words) which doesn't see what the fuss is about and mixes and matches between High and Low Church based on what they find resonant or convenient. Since the nineteenth century another element has been added in the shape of the Modernist/Liberal wing. These, stereotypically, are the kind of people who hold yoga sessions in the church hall, publicly doubt the bodily Resurrection, and want to be able to hold same-sex marriages.\\

Note that the political associations of the High and Low Churches have to some extent dissipated and even reversed. Most notably, the ultra-High-Church Oxford Movement of the 19th century was devoted to making Anglicanism as much like Catholicism as possible, with the hope of an eventual reconciliation or at least ''rapprochement'' with Rome; those in the movement were often the period equivalent of champagne socialists and tended to have conciliatory/'pro-Irish' views on UsefulNotes/TheIrishQuestion (historically characteristic of the left) and as a result, many High Church members are today associated with the Christian left (Tony Blair, an Anglo-Catholic prior to his conversion to Catholicism, is probably the most prominent contemporary example). In the meantime, many Low Church members became the sort of business-oriented, religiously conservative small shopkeepers who back the Conservatives.\\

Note that the link between class and church orientation has been weakened as well, with aristocrats as likely today to be Low Church as High. Indeed, UsefulNotes/ElizabethII herself was noted to have a "serious Low Church piety," possibly through the influence of her Scottish Presbyterian mother. That said, frankly, the Royal Family is a prime example of this shift, and has had distinctly Low Church leanings since the reign of UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria, who was thoroughly Protestant in her upbringing and surroundings (not only was she brought up by her German Lutheran mother and educated by the German Lutheran Baroness Lehzen and Baron Stockmar, she ended up marrying a German Lutheran, Prince Albert). Victoria went so far as to prefer the Church of Scotland over the Church of England in her personal religiosity. The main exception to this rule was Edward VII, who favoured the High Church and who was also the most liberal--relative to his time--of any of the Windsors.

!!Other English Protestants (and the Scots)
Beyond the Low Church wing of Anglicanism, there are a variety of even more Protestant denominations who reject the Anglican system as too centralised and/or too much of a compromise with Catholicism, including Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists,[[note]]Who occupied an odd position, as they split off from Low Church Anglicanism in the 18th century and were never quite as marginalised; they were officially just a reformist movement of the Church of England until shortly after the death of one of the founders, John Wesley, in 1791.[[/note]] and a host of other smaller and sometimes short-lived movements. These are collectively known as Nonconformists (as in refusing to "conform" to Anglicanism) or Dissenters, and were persecuted and restricted at times in the past. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dissenters were, like Catholics, generally prohibited from holding public office, attending university, or even having churches in the cities. As time went on, these restrictions were lifted, but not before they built an elaborate network of academies that, unlike their Church of England counterparts, taught practical subjects like applied maths, science, (living) foreign languages, engineering, and business methods.\\

Oh yes, business methods: Since the Dissenters were ''not'' prohibited from becoming craftsmen, and their religions tended not to frown upon and often even encouraged the pursuit of material success, they developed their crafts into industry--a field that Anglicans (particularly High Church Tories) were often too high-and-mighty to touch. Incidentally, these academies, especially the Quaker ones, are very often to this day among the most prestigious secondary schools in Britain outside of the traditional public schools.[[note]]They also inspired their brethren in America to establish similar academies, which are similarly often among the most prestigious schools in their region--witness the success of Sidwell Friends School in UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC, which has educated the sons and daughters of several American presidents--but only two who actually had Quaker connections (UsefulNotes/RichardNixon's daughters Tricia and Julie, who attended while Nixon was vice president from 1953 to 1961; Nixon was one of only two Quaker presidents. For the record, the children of the other Quaker president, UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover, remained in California when he first took federal office in the 1910s and 20s, and were in their 20s by the time he became President in 1929).[[/note]]\\

The Treaty of Union (1707) which combined England with Scotland included protection of Scotland's own established church, the Church of Scotland (known in Scots and informal English as "the Kirk"), which is Presbyterian (the Scottish Anglican minority is known as the Scottish Episcopal Church). It has had several acrimonious splits over its history. The stereotype of these folks, in sharp contrast to the Anglicans, is grey-haired, grizzled ministers with hard boots preaching the coming [[DoomyDoomsOfDoom Doom of the world]] and railing against sinful ''fun''. This is seldom true, and almost any instances will be found in the Western Isles or rural areas of the Highlands. Most of these will be part of one of the smaller splinter churches from the Kirk known as the Wee Frees (the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the Association of Free Churches, the Free Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) and so-on), some of which are unrelated and some of which result from the [[WeAreStrugglingTogether traditional and ongoing habit of schisming]] (the most recent was in 2000).\\

The result of all of this is that the Dissenters -- along with some Scots (the hardworking, business-minded Lowlanders who made up the core of the Kirk's membership found the English Dissenters most congenial as brothers in faith and as business partners) -- were absolutely critical in making Britain what it became. As the craftsman Dissenters and Scots quickly discovered, the basic tools of industrialisation were lying all around them, with many key inventions dating back to the Middle Ages: things like techniques for running heavy machinery on power (usually water power, which sent a lot of Dissenters to the hills, where fast-running streams were in ample supply) and processes for making glass that, it turns out, translated easily to metallurgy.\\

With no way to get ahead except starting a business and turning a huge profit, these Dissenters (and their Scottish brethren) started to put old technologies together in ways that changed the world -- all with an eye to making a fast buck from the rich Anglican snobs who disdained them but also seemed to collectively have more money than sense. The origin of the Industrial Revolution is thus peppered with the names of the Dissenters and Scottish Presbyterians who put these pieces together. Significant names in this lot include:

* Abraham Darby: A Quaker from Bristol who developed a cheap way of making high-quality cast iron using coke (purified coal), based on old glassmaking technology dating back to Elizabethan times.
* Thomas Newcomen: A Baptist lay preacher from Devon who made certain critical improvements to the steam engine, increasing its efficiency at doing what it did back then -- pulling water out of flooded mines, and thus making coal and metals cheaper.
* James Watt: A Scottish Presbyterian who made critical changes making the Newcomen engine useful for anything other than pumping water out of coal mines; it could now turn any machinery relying on rotary power. Since the Dissenter-run industries ran on waterwheels, which were only really useful in fast-running streams far from urban centers, Watt's engine was basically an offer to any industrialist to liberate himself from water power and put his factory in the city, close to the demand for his products and his best supply of labor.
* Josiah Wedgwood: A Unitarian from Staffordshire who was one of the first to take Watt up on his offer, building the first ever steam-powered factory to make his famous pottery. In the process, Wedgwood all but invented modern mass consumer culture by manufacturing new styles constantly, providing them to the Royal Family, and selling them at an affordable price so the growing middle class could say "I eat on the same plates as the Queen." (He was also related to UsefulNotes/CharlesDarwin, but that's yet another story.)
* John Wilkinson: A Presbyterian from Staffordshire who developed a way to make high-quality, precisely-bored steam engine cylinders -- and cannons -- from a solid piece of Darby's cast iron, making the Watt engine able to work to its full capacity (earlier cylinders fitted too loosely around their pistons, negating the efficiency advantages Watt's design had over Newcomen's), and a whole lot of other things besides.
* William Murdoch: Another Scottish Presbyterian and assistant to Watt -- later a partner in his firm -- who capitalised on an observation by a long-forgotten Scottish earl and developed the first practical technique for using coal gas as a light source, allowing factories to be fully lit through the night at low cost, meaning that he's responsible for the 24-hour factory, and thus the night shift, and therefore shift work--in other words, working by the clock, rather than the Sun or your own sleep cycle. If you work a job where you come in at a certain time and leave at a certain time, you more or less have Murdoch to thank--or curse. In fairness, gas light meant that the streets were soon fully lit and safe to walk by night.

A large proportion of the basic science on which the industrial techniques were founded were also the product of Dissenters (and their Church of Scotland brethren); the most consequential are probably Joseph Priestley (John Wilkinson's brother-in-law, a Congregationalist-turned-Unitarian minister, and a bad preacher[[note]]Which interacted with his defense of Dissenters and support of political reform to incense both lower-class and upper-class Anglicans against him, with the result that he was first run out of Birmingham and then out of Britain altogether; he spent the last years of his life in rural Pennsylvania.[[/note]] but a great chemist--he discovered carbon dioxide and oxygen) and Joseph Black (a professor at the University of Glasgow who discovered latent heat,[[note]]On commission, we should note, from a group of Scotch whisky distillers, who wanted to know the [[ThriftyScot minimum amount of fuel they needed]] to boil their mash to produce the magical distillate.[[/note]] a concept critical to the development of efficient steam engines), but really, the whole scientific side of the Scottish Enlightenment (in full swing at the time) counts. And they financed much of this themselves, too: both Lloyds Bank and Barclays, the first banks to provide capital to the provincial cities where this business was happening, were founded by Quakers--largely because the Anglican financiers of London didn't think banking had a future outside the capital.\\

Because the Church of England's split from Rome was because of the King's sex life rather than popular demand, the Anglican Church has always had a rather wider range of internal doctrinal difference than most Christian denominations. The traditional split, to simplify things considerably, has been between the Anglo-Catholics, or "High Church", who think that just because you reject the authority of the Pope doesn't mean you can't continue to substantially accept Catholic doctrines and practices, and the Evangelicals, or "Low Church", who are fully Protestant in their doctrines and practices. The UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar was partly a religious conflict, with the High Church siding predominantly with the King and the Low Church with Parliament. Between these there has historically been a third "Broad Church" position (also called "Latitudinarian" among people overly fond of fancy-sounding words) which doesn't see what the fuss is about and mixes and matches between High and Low Church based on what they find resonant or convenient. Since the nineteenth century another element has been added in the shape of the Modernist/Liberal wing. These, stereotypically, are the kind of people who hold yoga sessions in the church hall, publicly doubt the bodily Resurrection, and want to be able to hold same-sex marriages.
Note that the political associations of the High and Low Churches have to some extent dissipated and even reversed. Most notably, the ultra-High-Church Oxford Movement of the 19th century was devoted to making Anglicanism as much like Catholicism as possible, with the hope of an eventual reconciliation or at least ''rapprochement'' with Rome; those in the movement were often the period equivalent of champagne socialists and tended to have conciliatory/'pro-Irish' views on UsefulNotes/TheIrishQuestion (historically characteristic of the left) and as a result, many High Church members are today associated with the Christian left (Tony Blair, an Anglo-Catholic prior to his conversion to Catholicism, is probably the most prominent contemporary example). In the meantime, many Low Church members became the sort of business-oriented, religiously conservative small shopkeepers who back the Conservatives.
Note that the link between class and church orientation has been weakened as well, with aristocrats as likely today to be Low Church as High. Indeed, UsefulNotes/Elizabeth II herself was noted to have a "serious Low Church piety," possibly through the influence of her Scottish Presbyterian mother. That said, frankly, the Royal Family is a prime example of this shift, and has had distinctly Low Church leanings since the reign of UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria, who was thoroughly Protestant in her upbringing and surroundings (not only was she brought up by her German Lutheran mother and educated by the German Lutheran Baroness Lehzen and Baron Stockmar, she ended up marrying a German Lutheran, Prince Albert). Victoria went so far as to prefer the Church of Scotland over the Church of England in her personal religiosity. The main exception to this rule was Edward VII, who favoured the High Church and who was also the most liberal--relative to his time--of any of the Windsors.

Beyond the Low Church wing of Anglicanism, there are a variety of even more Protestant denominations who reject the Anglican system as too centralised and/or too much of a compromise with Catholicism, including Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists,[[note]]Who occupied an odd position, as they split off from Low Church Anglicanism in the 18th century and were never quite as marginalised; they were officially just a reformist movement of the Church of England until shortly after the death of one of the founders, John Wesley, in 1791.[[/note]] and a host of other smaller and sometimes short-lived movements. These are collectively known as Nonconformists (as in refusing to "conform" to Anglicanism) or Dissenters, and were persecuted and restricted at times in the past. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dissenters were, like Catholics, generally prohibited from holding public office, attending university, or even having churches in the cities. As time went on, these restrictions were lifted, but not before they built an elaborate network of academies that, unlike their Church of England counterparts, taught practical subjects like applied maths, science, (living) foreign languages, engineering, and business methods.
Oh yes, business methods: Since the Dissenters were ''not'' prohibited from becoming craftsmen, and their religions tended not to frown upon and often even encouraged the pursuit of material success, they developed their crafts into industry--a field that Anglicans (particularly High Church Tories) were often too high-and-mighty to touch. Incidentally, these academies, especially the Quaker ones, are very often to this day among the most prestigious secondary schools in Britain outside of the traditional public schools.[[note]]They also inspired their brethren in America to establish similar academies, which are similarly often among the most prestigious schools in their region--witness the success of Sidwell Friends School in UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC, which has educated the sons and daughters of several American presidents--but only two who actually had Quaker connections (UsefulNotes/RichardNixon's daughters Tricia and Julie, who attended while Nixon was vice president from 1953 to 1961; Nixon was one of only two Quaker presidents. For the record, the children of the other Quaker president, UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover, remained in California when he first took federal office in the 1910s and 20s, and were in their 20s by the time he became President in 1929).[[/note]]
The Treaty of Union (1707) which combined England with Scotland included protection of Scotland's own established church, the Church of Scotland (known in Scots and informal English as "the Kirk"), which is Presbyterian (the Scottish Anglican minority is known as the Scottish Episcopal Church). It has had several acrimonious splits over its history. The stereotype of these folks, in sharp contrast to the Anglicans, is grey-haired, grizzled ministers with hard boots preaching the coming [[DoomyDoomsOfDoom Doom of the world]] and railing against sinful ''fun''. This is seldom true, and almost any instances will be found in the Western Isles or rural areas of the Highlands. Most of these will be part of one of the smaller splinter churches from the Kirk known as the Wee Frees (the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the Association of Free Churches, the Free Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) and so-on), some of which are unrelated and some of which result from the [[WeAreStrugglingTogether traditional and ongoing habit of schisming]] (the most recent was in 2000).
The result of all of this is that the Dissenters -- along with some Scots (the hardworking, business-minded Lowlanders who made up the core of the Kirk's membership found the English Dissenters most congenial as brothers in faith and as business partners) -- were absolutely critical in making Britain what it became. As the craftsman Dissenters and Scots quickly discovered, the basic tools of industrialisation were lying all around them, with many key inventions dating back to the Middle Ages: things like techniques for running heavy machinery on power (usually water power, which sent a lot of Dissenters to the hills, where fast-running streams were in ample supply) and processes for making glass that, it turns out, translated easily to metallurgy.

A large proportion of the basic science on which the industrial techniques were founded were also the product of Dissenters (and their Church of Scotland brethren); the most consequential are probably Joseph Priestley (John Wilkinson's brother-in-law, a Congregationalist-turned-Unitarian minister, and a bad preacher[[note]]Which interacted with his defense of Dissenters and support of political reform to incense both lower-class and upper-class Anglicans against him, with the result that he was first run out of Birmingham and then out of Britain altogether; he spent the last years of his life in rural Pennsylvania.[[/note]] but a great chemist--he discovered carbon dioxide and oxygen) and Joseph Black (a professor at the University of Glasgow who discovered latent heat,[[note]]On commission, we should note, from a group of Scotch whisky distillers, who wanted to know the [[ThriftyScot minimum amount of fuel they needed]] to boil their mash to produce the magical distillate.[[/note]] a concept critical to the development of efficient steam engines), but really, the whole scientific side of the Scottish Enlightenment (in full swing at the time) counts. And they financed much of this themselves, too: both Lloyds Bank and Barclays, the first banks to provide capital to the provincial cities where this business was happening, were founded by Quakers--largely because the Anglican financiers of London didn't think banking had a future outside the capital.

Note that the link between class and church orientation has been weakened as well, with aristocrats as likely today to be Low Church as High. Indeed, [[UsefulNotes/HMTheQueen Queen Elizabeth]] herself has been noted to have a "serious Low Church piety," possibly through the influence of her Scottish Presbyterian mother. That said, frankly, the Royal Family is a prime example of this shift, and has had distinctly Low Church leanings since the reign of UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria, who was thoroughly Protestant in her upbringing and surroundings (not only was she brought up by her German Lutheran mother and educated by the German Lutheran Baroness Lehzen and Baron Stockmar, she ended up marrying a German Lutheran, Prince Albert). Victoria went so far as to prefer the Church of Scotland over the Church of England in her personal religiosity. The main exception to this rule was Edward VII, who favoured the High Church and who was also the most liberal--relative to his time--of any of the Windsors.

* '''Underclass''' -- Do not work and subsist on state benefits or crime. Ten per cent of the adult population has not worked since 1997 and twenty per cent of British children are growing up in a household where no adult works. Depending on the definition used, this class may or may not specifically exclude {{housewi|fe}}ves (and other such adults subsisting on someone else's invome for whatever reason), family caregivers, the handicapped, and such people whom society have deemed acceptable not to engage in paid work.

* '''Upper class''' -- If the other classes are defined by what you do for a living, upper-class people traditionally ''don't'' (i.e. "The IdleRich"). Historically this class was made up of the landed gentry and aristocracy who lived on the rents of the land they owned and their family's OldMoney. [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII The Second World War]] and modern taxes ended this lifestyle for almost everyone so most of the modern generation of lords and ladies actually have to work, though they tend to be more prevalent in advertising, the law, and media rather than 'trade', though many still keep up their family estates--albeit nowadays as tourist attractions. After the WWII, it became rather unseemly for the idle rich to act too ostentatiously idle, so many would take a day-job just to be able to say they have one, for example, the infamous Lord Lucan technically was a merchant banker with an annual salary of £500 (a princely sum for a commoner back in 1954), but he'd be losing much more money than that daily at the gambling tables. The source of your money matters far more than the amount; all else being equal, an Army colonel on £80,000 a year (usually upper-middle/professional-class wages) would be generally regarded as slightly more upper-class than his twin brother businessman earning £160,000. Even investment banking and City trading, where the more fiscally adventurous younger scions of aristocracy had a firm place, was seen as slightly gauche.

* '''Underclass''' -- Do not work and subsist on state benefits or crime. Ten per cent of the adult population has not worked since 1997 and twenty per cent of British children are growing up in a household where no adult works. Depending on the definition used, this class may or may not specifically exclude {{housewi|fe}}ves, family caregivers, the handicapped, and such people whom society have deemed acceptable not to engage in paid work.

One clear division that can be seen in the UK is the divide between the "North" of England and the "South". The precise divide is debated (common ones are the Watford Gap Service Station, the most northerly point where one can buy the ''Evening Standard'' [Oxford], and ''anywhere outside the M25''), but the 1983 general election, where Labour won no seats south of Birmingham outside of Greater London gives you a good hint.

Another definition of the North is where people stop pronouncing "ass" as "arse". Strange to some, this has its problems as many in UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry also use the "Northern" pronunciation. This confusion and debate might be due to most political, business and media events largely happening in London, though one of the others may have hit upon something in the North-East and South-West divide, nothing seems to happen in the east either, so the Creator/{{BBC}} don't often call round to check up on the North-East. Another reason is that a lot of Southerners claim to be Northern because of the stereotype that Northerners are working-class miners from kitchen-sink dramas (which basically makes you sound both really hard and a victim of domestic abuse, the Top Trump of My Upbringing Was More Difficult than Yours), so if their dad's from Nottingham they'll say they're Northern, even if they only go at the Easter Holidays.