This is the question that has been circulating in the media recently. From being a predominantly mono-cultural society pre World War II Britain is now a multi-cultural nation.
 
In a national study conducted for the Commission for Racial Equality and published in 2002, a number of issues were researched to ‘investigate feelings and opinions in contemporary Britain on race relations as well as exploring attitudes towards community, culture and identity.’
 
Of the results, 59% of all ethnicities felt that Britain had good relations between people of different backgrounds. 
 
When asked what Britishness was there was no consistent answer to define this.
 
When thinking of ways to describe the British way of life, people believed attitudes and behaviour, such as politeness, to be an important aspect as opposed to only ethnicity.
 
The majority (86%) of those questioned did not believe that people had to be white to be ‘truly British.’