By Elise Hutchinson • Immigration • 2 mins

Posts shared on social media have claimed that the white population in London has dropped from 98% to 34%.

This is false.

The latest census data was recorded in 2021 and shows that 53.8%, not 34%, of people in London identified as white.

This includes 36.8% who identified as “White: English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British” plus a further 17% who identified as “White: Other” which includes those who said they were white Irish, Gypsy or Irish Traveller, Roma or any other white background.

One post claims the percentage of white people living in London has “plummeted from 97% in 1961”. We haven’t been able to verify this figure.

The way ethnicity is recorded has evolved since then, making direct comparisons between decades difficult. The 1961 Census did record information on a person's country of birth, but didn’t explicitly ask about race at the time. The census did not include an ethnicity question until 1991.

It is accurate that the number of people identifying as white in London has gone down in recent decades, from 79.8 % in 1991, to 59.8% in 2011 and 53.8% in 2021. However, directly comparing 1961 data, which asked about country of birth, with modern 2021 data, which measures self-reported ethnicity, is misleading.

The video used in posts appears to have been taken during this year’s Notting Hill Carnival.