Great Britain

Texts: Who are the British? A tradition of immigration. The city of Sheffield.

Grammar: The Complex Subject.

Практические цели: овладение дополнительной информацией о стране изучаемого языка, знакомство с историей, обычаями и традициями страны. Закрепление грамматического материала.

Who are the British?

Most people in Britain are English, Scottish or Welsh, but in some British cities you can meet people of many different nationalities. There is one London street, less than 300 meters long, with businesses run by Arabs, Greeks, Indians, Italians, Jamaicans, Nigerians, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, as well as British.

But is Britain a cosmopolitan society? It really depends on where you go. There are large areas of Britain untouched by immigration. In 1991, 5.5 per cent of the 57 million populations described themselves as belonging to an ethnic minority of Caribbean, African or Asian origin. However, in Scotland, Wales, the north and south-west of England only 1 per cent of the population belongs to an ethnic minority. Most members of ethnic minorities live in the South-East. In Greater London, they represent 20 per cent of the population.

London's immigrants come from inside and outside Europe. There are almost the same numbers of Irish immigrants (3.8 per cent of the population) as Black Caribbean immigrants (4.4 per cent of the population). Many so-called "immigrants" are born in Britain: more than 36,000 Londoners born in Britain describe themselves as "Black British" instead of "African" or "Afro-Caribbean".

A tradition of immigration.

People have been coming to Britain for centuries: some to get a better life, some to escape natural disasters, some as political or religious refugees. Many Irish people came to England in 1845 to escape famine, but usually they came to find work. Most of the roads, railways and canals built in the nineteenth century were made by Irish workers.

The greatest wave of immigration was in the 1950s and 1960s. This happened not only in Britain, but also throughout Western Europe. Many companies needed people for unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. Britain advertised, particularly in the English-speaking islands of the Caribbean, for people to come to Britain and work. Other people came from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Hong Kong. Many people came to Britain in the 1950s to work in hospitals, on the buses or for the railways.