British people welcome cultural changes brought about by immigration, regard rising prices as the biggest threat to the country's wellbeing in 2012, and believe the Queen's diamond jubilee celebrations will lift the nation's spirits more than the Olympics, reveals a wide-ranging poll on attitudes .
In a major report, Hopes and Fears, that touches on subjects varying from the class system, attitudes towards Scottish independence and changes in the country since it last held the Olympic Games in 1948, the poll paints a picture of a hopeful country at ease with itself but fearful of the consequences of its diminishing resources.
In one illustration of the nuances of attitudes, the poll – carried out for British Future, a new independent thinktank, and the Observer – reveals how the "cricket test" of former Tory minister Norman Tebbit, proposed in 1990, in which the loyalty of immigrants is judged by which national teams they support, is now seen as outdated by Britons. Only 15% believe it is important for immigrants to support home teams, and 50% of people believe the children of immigrants should be free to support the teams of their parents' country of birth.
Yet, in a week in which race hit the headlines following the claim via Twitter by shadow health minister Diane Abbott that "white people love playing divide and rule", the report also shows that cultural tolerance and embrace of immigration offset deep concerns about immigration.
There is overwhelming agreement that immigration has been good for our domestic cuisine, for example, with 68% saying that what we eat has changed for the better. There is also a strong feeling that immigration has contributed positively to entrepreneurship, film, music, fashion and design.
But the report also reveals deep economic anxiety. Many respondents believe immigration has had a negative impact on the supply of homes, jobs, schools or hospitals. A perception of worsening crime is blamed on an influx of immigrants in recent decades.
There is also a rejection of segregation, with 51% of people believing the government should encourage parents to put their children in ethnically diverse schools. Black and Asian people feel this most strongly (60%) but, the report says, the "large white majority don't lag far behind (51%)."
The report concludes that "we recognise benefits and pressures from immigration", adding: "It won't be enough to say that it has been great for food and football if people remain so concerned that impacts on jobs and housing aren't addressed."
Other findings of the poll are:
■ women are the nation's optimists, with 56% of them positive about the future compared with 48% of men;
■ Asian Britons are most optimistic about Britain in 2012;
■ people feel housing has been the area in which immigration has hit hardest;
■ Scots are as keen to stay in the union as the English and Welsh are to keep them, while it turns out to be the Geordies who feel least British;
■ a north-south divide emerges over whether class has become less important since 1948. Just over 40% of Londoners think class matters less, compared with 29% who disagree. In the north, 35% think it matters less, compared with 39% who disagree.
Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, said: "Even in these anxious times, the poll offers grounds for confidence that Britain today can combine our strong sense of history and traditions with an inclusive pride in the diverse, modern society we have become."
Ipsos Mori interviewed a representative sample of 2,320 adults aged 16 plus across Great Britain, for British Future, including a boosted sample of 497 people in Scotland. Interviews were conducted online over the period from 30 November to 6 December 2011.
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7 January 2012 10:05PM
Less than 2.5K people feels like a rather small sample to me. The conclusions appear on the surface to be very predictable. Also the 'fears' seem very limited in their representation of a wider set of issues which must surely be troubling people out there.
I should imagine that many people have fears about the growing number of people dis-empowered by increasing poverty, limited opportunities for employment; mental and other health issues. The fast-growing elderly population and how people can be best cared for in old age. And, the overwhelming slant towards 'the bottom line' being the ultimate goal in every aspect of life, which is inevitably eroding public services. Well, they are some of my 'secret' fears ...now not so secret!
7 January 2012 10:17PM
How does Prince Philip and Sir Trev beng poplar have any bearing on people's hopes and fears, secret or otherwise?
7 January 2012 10:27PM
I've always thought Sir Trev was a bit wooden, certainly.
7 January 2012 10:40PM
What a load of tripe, the sample is miniscule its riduclous, how can views made by less than 0.01% of the population be applied to everybody?
7 January 2012 11:02PM
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7 January 2012 11:20PM
YAY!!!!
7 January 2012 11:21PM
If this is the sample size used to form Government policy no wonder the country is on its arse and everything failing, as regards my education I was an A level pass in maths and studied physics and engineering when I was a teenager ,I am now self employed in Construction and use maths on a regular basis.I have not got Gas as I live in a rural community and use heating oil.
I think the tone of your comment was a bit condescending, but never mind eh,nobody is perfect.
7 January 2012 11:23PM
Gotta say, I'm worried when I walk out into the suburbs.
7 January 2012 11:31PM
Actually in a poll of 2,340 people,1.4% were perfect
7 January 2012 11:36PM
49% want racially segregated schools? Not much of a rejection of racial segregation!
Erm not much of a welcome!
Spin a bit harder Guardian, or better still, tell the truth.
7 January 2012 11:38PM
Trouble is that Britain has no vision at the moment. What do we want? Get rid of the current impediments to democracy (such as the monetary link between business and Government)? Become the leading nation in sustainable energy? Fully integrate with Europe? Fully disintegrate with Europe? Fix the housing crisis? Separate casino from retail banking? etc...
I suspect most people would have a more positive attitude to the future if we knew where we were driving it to.
7 January 2012 11:50PM
It's nothing to do with the government (i think) it's Ipsos Mori for the Guardian, I think.
There's some odd questions, strangely phrased, and then vigourously spun into the above piece.
7 January 2012 11:53PM
It's not 'many', it's a very large majority, between 65% and 70%.
7 January 2012 11:56PM
I agree with the posters who say that a questionnaire of less than 3,000 people cannot be generalised to a country of 60m people. I mean, what is a representative sample? Divide up everyone by age/income/ethnicity/geography/etc and surely you would have way, way more than 3,000 groups of people?
People should wait for the '11 census before making these proclamations, at least that will give us some idea of what is going on in this country.
8 January 2012 12:02AM
The sample is bigger than most political opinion polls, so may be slightly more accurate.
Many of the answers given reflect the lies peddled by the media, so the article just recycles these.
My main gripe is the infographics using the presentation that psychological research shows is most confusing to read - the 3-D pie (doughnut). Use of this presentation is usually a sign that the results should not be believed. Setting the slices in different orders gives wholly different impressions.
8 January 2012 12:12AM
A massive 2,320 people were 'interviewed' as a representative of public oppinion within the UK ?
Seriously? Did they wait outside one job center for 2 hours? Or perhaps one post office on 'pension' day for this 'poll'?
I really hope that our tax wasn't wasted on this, futile, pointless and ridiculous endevour. If the nation needs a comment on the country, it will be said many times daily by the people who suffer because of the fools that deem a 'poll' of 2,320 citizens a representative compilation of National feeling.
Another quango, another failure.
8 January 2012 12:19AM
If you don't like the answers then what can you do? nothing!
8 January 2012 12:21AM
Well nobody has ever asked me what I think. Where do they get these people from?
8 January 2012 12:38AM
Chivanova
7 January 2012 11:56PM
People should wait for the '11 census before making these proclamations, at least that will give us some idea of what is going on in this country.
*******************************
Census? Must have missed that.
8 January 2012 12:41AM
The stats is probably fine. More concerning is whether or not people are telling the truth. My take is that opposition to immigration is far greater than this poll implies. My foreign wife has difficulties occasionally relating to her accent. I've had difficulties with my mixed British-foreign surname (sending CVs with my full surname gets responses of 0% from potential employers, while sending the exact same CV with just the British portion of my surname gets responses from 60%).
8 January 2012 1:04AM
ComplexWorld. Just goes to show what a load of crap this article is doesn't it? There's really no reason for British people to welcome change brought about by multiculturalism, because it is most definitely change for the worse.
8 January 2012 1:07AM
Prince Philip has made a positive contribution towards Britain? A hopeful country at ease with itself? Clearly many of these people were in a coma during the summer riots. What an absolute load of rubbish. If this Poll is in any way accurate, it only goes to show how backward many UK citizens are.
8 January 2012 1:13AM
Who framed the questions? How were they framed, and why? What's made the headlines all week? Draw your own conclusions.
8 January 2012 1:57AM
Rising VAT, crime and national debt are signs of a country in decline, but those who didn't take part in the survey already knew that.
8 January 2012 2:45AM
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8 January 2012 2:49AM
There are some interesting bits of information in the survey. Economy (prices, debt, employment, healthcare, housing, etc.) all are part of the anxiety and uncertainty.
Similarly, immigration is seen as the negative cause of school standards, crime, housing shortage, and quality of healthcare, but seems to be perceived as positive aspect of food, entertainment, entrepreneurship, etc.
Optimism seems to decline as one moves from family to locality, nation, and Europe.
What was the most interesting was the perception and fact of acceptance in the community. "It never happened" seems to score high. This indicates the sense of alienation people feel when moving away from the community they belonged. What was not clear from the charts was the racial and ethnic composition of those answering these questions. Was there a significant difference? If the nation is an imagined community, then the sense of not being part of that community is a very strong indicator of weakened fabric of society.
8 January 2012 3:33AM
the end of the world at the end of the year will be very convient for any of are anxiety and if not that we have ww3 to look forward to
just to pass the time
8 January 2012 5:39AM
I would seriously like to know where this poll was taken.....Slough maybe.....as such a high percentile of peeps there are not white english.Well we like foreign food...yes i agree....does not mean i want immigrants in my country(or should i say their country now).
I can eat their food without them being here....they are here for 1 reason only....OUR MONEY.....why can people not see this.
Now most people are going to say i am racist....hmmm i'm getting that way...but its against how i want to be....i travel the world for business extensively...on a grass routes level not on a management level..and have to deal with people from labourers to management to kings and princes....trust me...they want our money nothing else
8 January 2012 6:40AM
I can't think which depresses me more: public adulation for our ludicrous hereditary monarchy or the enthusiasm for people running round in circles and throwing things.
8 January 2012 7:48AM
Reply to aimerydethouars
Being childishly insulting about a person's maths ability is not an argument. I studied statistics as part of my university course and the main thing it did was give me a distrust of surveys, especially political surveys.
One thing that needs to be factored in is that many people think they have to be PC these days and are afraid of speaking their mind. So they give the answers that they think are expected. As all know it depends on how the questions are phrased and asked.
Sampling 2,320 people over a period of one week and then applying the results to a pop. of over 60,million is obviously questionable.
BTW I hate cricket.
8 January 2012 8:01AM
"fearful of the consequences of its diminishing resources"
Very perceptive. The current throw away consumerist capitalist system is unsustainable.
We must create a utopian socialist system that concentrates on providing everyone with food, clothing and shelter. All new homes should be 100% energy efficient. All goods should have a design life of decades not minutes.
8 January 2012 8:12AM
A survey of the people in my house shows a 100% support for the view that the comments in the aricle, despite a Guardian spin-rate of several billion rpm, have no resemblence to the actual results of this bizarre poll.
8 January 2012 8:43AM
Yep. Or, like my teenage self, surely there are people who decided to make themselves more interesting during the anonymous drug survey that came round our school. Or are contrary for the sake of it.
How anyone can possibly view the short term future of the United Kingdom positively is beyond me.
8 January 2012 9:15AM
What it "feels like" to you isn't really of much importance. It's a bigger sample size than most political opinion polls. The people conducting the poll probably had more understanding of statistics than you.
8 January 2012 9:17AM
Excellent - British people are learning about economics faster than the Guardian!
Now let's have no more comments about house price inflation being an indicator of a 'healthy market'.
8 January 2012 9:18AM
Pointless exercise in wasting money as usual. Half of the produced stats are virtually meaningless, and can be interpreted as you like. As has been pointed out, people are economical with the truth when it comes to surveys, and give the surveyor in question socially acceptable answers, not what they're really feeling, which probably changes with the wind.
8 January 2012 9:19AM
There are 47m people in the UK over the age of 16. A sample size of 1900 randomnly chosen and assuming a normal distribution would give a confidence level of 99% in a result +/-3%.
The questionable term is the phrase 'representative sample' as opposed to 'random sample'. Sounds to me as though a weighted sample was used. So that if there are twice as many people earning between £20 and 30K than between 30K and 40K then twice as many people are questioned in the former compared to the latter. So you may have a point. These results may be biased towards a certain demographic.
Also, there is (as others have noted) journalistic bias representative of the Guardian's political agenda here - the average joe is not terribly exercised by immigration and having their children educated in a class of pupils who are predominately non-English speakers.Mmmh!
Not a terribly useful report.
8 January 2012 9:20AM
So Geordies feel less British than any other group. No surprise there.
8 January 2012 9:23AM
Bad for schools, crime, housing and jobs
Good for takeaways
Great deal then
8 January 2012 9:27AM
I have to say, I just received an Ipso poll for the NHS. The questions hardly reflect what I expect or need from the NHS. I am going to assume the same with all polls.
The most offensive thing to me when I receive the polls is the one page questionnaire at the back on 'tell us about yourself' are you british, white british, black british, other british, half and half, can't make up your mind, what religion are you? Ah hell, did you land on planet earth in the past 20 years and can we consider you a citizen of this country as you use the services and fill out our polls?
This is ridiculous anyway, it's a bit disingenuous, to me, anyway, to classify people as one thing or another, we are British and therefore we drink tea and think we might like to be integrated and hey look how happy we are, really we must be, a few thousand people said they were on a poll. I know plenty of British that embrace other cultures, would prefer to live in other cultures, so where is the poll on that ? How about, would you rather be British in say, Barbados?
8 January 2012 9:34AM
Nice to see that a lot of the people don't sheepishly follow the line of the Coalition on youth unemployment about Labour's record. The former polled 5% above the latter in that respect. Not sure if this sample reflects the nationwide sentiment though.
8 January 2012 9:37AM
I would be curious to get the opinions of Geordies on this;
If you had the chance to allow the Newcastle region to become part of an independent Scotland with a lower tax band and an increase in infrastructure projects, or to remain an outpost of a dysfunctional and unproductive Westminster that is Londoncentric, which would you choose?!
8 January 2012 9:54AM
Thanks for all of the comments so far.
Some people can object to opinion polling in general, if they want to, but I don't really see what evidence they would have on which to base their counter-argument about people really think. The pollsters have a better claim that findings do reflect (within the usual caveats about margins of error) where public attitudes are.
If people would have liked to see different themes and questions asked, I would be interested to have examples of them, as we might get to do something like this at some time in the future again.
All of the tables and breaks will be published on the Ipsos-Mori website, so people will be able to see for example that the vast majority of respondents are white, for example, because that represents the country. They will also be able to see how the attitudes of different classes, regions, age groups, genders, races differed, or didn't differ, on the full range of questions. (There are some significant differences, but they may be less stark than some might expect).
The poll has nothing to do with the government, or taxpayers money, though we hope it will inform public debate. You can find out more about British Future at www.britishfuture.org
8 January 2012 9:55AM
oh hai,
there is a 99% chance that the real population figures are within 2.7% of these results.
online calculator
i suspect you do not use statistics in your job.
:D
8 January 2012 10:01AM
Given the current vogue for arresting native English people who speak their minds about immigration and race, I think you can assume a degree of self-censorship in the answers to that one.
I see that Emma West has opted for a jury trial, which might be interesting:
http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/news/article/2064/race-rant-accused-to-face-trial
8 January 2012 10:04AM
ahuh?
people are more likely to be vocal about immigration if they are upset about it.
8 January 2012 10:07AM
"What a load of tripe, the sample is miniscule its riduclous, how can views made by less than 0.01% of the population be applied to everybody?"
Easily.
Read any elementary textbook on stats.
And see how accurate the predictions of election results are
with similarly small samples.
Part of the science of this started around 1900 at the Guinness brewery -
"Student's t test".
Quality control using small samples.
8 January 2012 10:08AM
i think is more convincing point than your argument against the study. it seems like it was by mail, and anonymous.
you seem pretty comfortable implying that it's ok to racially abuse people... is that because you are just so brave??
8 January 2012 10:09AM
Did they ask the Scots in Scotland? I can't believe they want to stay in the Union when England is isolating itself in the World. They'd have to be stupid.
8 January 2012 10:11AM
GAH I'M ON THE INTERNET AND I'M ANGRY AND I'M GOING TO SAY SO AND RECOMMEND ALL THE POSTS WITH RACIST SUBTEXT GAHHHHHH.