00:00Britons are fleeing London en masse as some parts of the UK experience a
00:04seismic shift in demographics. Sarah Firth reports on why so-called white
00:10flight is seeing an exodus from cities and suburbs with dominant ethnic
00:14populations. London, a multicultural hub known for its thriving diversity spanning
00:24the centuries but research by social think-tank demos reveals that while
00:30London remains as vibrant as ever it's perhaps not as integrated as some people
00:35might think. London has experienced a huge amount of what's called white flight
00:43lower income white people mainly in the outer suburbs leaving London because they
00:50think it's changed too fast for them. One of those people is Jane Kelly having
00:54lived in London most of her adult life she's seen firsthand the cultural shift
00:59and is now looking to move house as she feels the area she lives in has lost all
01:04sense of community. All people I knew when I moved in here have gone they've all
01:07moved away and there are now mostly flats with very transitory population. But
01:15perhaps surprisingly it seems many of the older generation of migrants who live
01:20around here and have settled and built up businesses agree that integration
01:24is not working as well as it maybe should. The ethnic cultural diversity in
01:29London is part of what makes London great so why do you think we're seeing a lot of
01:33talk about these sort of problems arising? Well to be honest with you it's foreign
01:37people as more or less these European people they're just interested to do a short
01:42journey make the money and then run off the country and that's it there's no
01:46investment return to the country there's nothing to rebuild the country it's only for
01:53themselves to make money and that's you know that's what they're interested for I
01:57mean I've been to this country when I was like 22 years old now I'm 43 years old so
02:03I'm investing business I'm doing so many things in this country paying tax back
02:06into the country and you know doing that that's the way it has to be. In London
02:10white Brits now make up just 45 percent of the capital's total population. We're
02:16here at one of London's busiest train stations and in the working week a
02:20commuter hub. Now over the course of a decade and London saw its white British
02:24population fall by more than 600,000 people whilst in the commuter towns on
02:29the outskirts and the populations become more ethnically mixed so we know that
02:34white Brits are leaving London behind the question is why and what effect if
02:38any it's having on the local communities they've left behind. Well there's a certain
02:42amount of diversity which is very nice in any city but when the diversity
02:47becomes so extreme that you have almost like balkanized groups that there were no
02:53actual traditional communities all the traditional communities are outnumbered
02:58completely by newcomers and the newcomers keep on and on rolling in it has a very
03:04alienating effect. What's been seen across the UK for a long time has been most
03:09acute in London but the figures aren't the full story avoiding ethnic communities does
03:15play a role in so-called white flights but evidence shows that race may not be
03:19the main driver. I think the main thing about that white flight reminds us of is
03:24that there is a problem the mistake it makes it says that problem is just about
03:27ethnicity it's not it's about age and it's about mixing between people of
03:31different incomes and we need to address all these things together. There are now
03:35concerns Britain could see yet another immigration surge at the end of this
03:39year when some 21 million Romanians and 7 million Bulgarians will be free to travel
03:45and work across the EU. Only a fraction of those are forecast to actually come here
03:51but previous immigration underestimates coupled with white British relocation are
03:57changing the face of London's ethnic makeup without much understanding of what the
04:03full ramifications of that might be. Sarah Firth, RT, London
Comments