What was claimed
The white population in London has plummeted from 98% to 34% now.
Our verdict
False. The latest census data shows that 53.8% of people in London identified as white generally. 36.8% identified as white British.
London’s white population has not ‘plummeted to 34%’
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.
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Historical comparisons
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.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the claim misrepresents the data on the proportion of white people in London.