     
|
| Total population |
|---|
| Cannot be reliably calculated as the census figures do not provide for an Anglo-Celtic Australian category |
| Regions with significant populations |
| All States and territories of Australia |
| Languages |
| Religion |
|
Predominantly Christian |
| Related ethnic groups |
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Anglo-African · British American · Irish American · British Latin American · Cornish · English · Irish · New Zealand European · Scottish · Welsh · White British and other white/European ethnicities. |
Anglo-Celtic Australian describes Australians with British and/or Irish ancestral origins.[1]
Contents |
From the beginning of the colonial era until the mid-20th Century, British and/or Irish comprised the vast majority of settlers, and later, post-Federation immigrants coming to Australia.
Anglo-Celtic is not a category in the Australian census. The ABS has stated that most who list "Australian" as their ancestry are part of the Anglo-Celtic group. Australian censuses tend to show significantly fewer people of Scottish and Irish ancestry than ethnic composition studies indicate. Australian demographer Dr James Jupp speculated that many of these people prefer to list themselves as being of Australian ancestry[2].
In 1999, the Anglo-Celtic ethnic strength in the Australian population was calculated as 69.88%[3]. This represents a proportional decline from 1947 when Anglo-Celtic ethnic strength was 90% and 1988 when it was 74.55%. The study also projected that in 2025 the Anglo-Celtic proportion will fall to 62.5%.
At the 2006 Census of Australia[4] where citizens could self-select their ancestry, out of a total of 19,855,288 people in Australia, 6,283,647 (31.6%) Australians selected English ancestry, 1,803,740 (9.1%) selected Irish ancestry, 1,501,204 (7.6%) selected Scottish, 113,242 (0.7%) selected Welsh, 1,864 (0.01%) selected Manx, and 5,686 (0.3%) selected British ancestry (respondants could nominate up to two ancestries, so a single respondent could include both English and Welsh for example).[5]
The United Kingdom remains the leading source of immigrants to Australia. In 2005-06 22,143 persons born in the United Kingdom settled in Australia, representing 21.4% of all migrants. At the 2006 Census (excluding overseas visitors)[6] 1,038,165 persons identified themselves as having been born in the United Kingdom (5.2% of the Australian population), while 50,251 identified themselves as Irish born.
Sydney has the largest number of British-born residents (175,166), followed closely by Perth (171,023), Australia's fourth largest city.
The term Anglo-Celtic is primarily associated with Australians of British and/or Irish ancestry. The broad term reflects the ethno-cultural composition of post-colonial Australian society, in which English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh components fused into a singular national group.
Other terms like "Anglo", "Anglo-Saxon" or "Anglo-Saxon-Celtic" are used interchangeably with "Anglo-Celtic" (sometimes inaccurately, such as for persons whose lineage cannot be confirmed or established, or who are of an exclusively Celtic background). The word "skip" (derogatory) has been used by some ethnic groups in Australia to refer to Anglo-Celtic Australians; the term is in reference to the 1960s television program Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.
The emergence of Australian nationalism in the second half of the nineteenth century diminished the degree in which Anglo-Celtic Australians identified themselves as primarily from their homelands, although many elements of Australian culture and life, from jurisprudence to gardening, are transplanted from British and Irish traditions.
Some have argued that the term is entirely a product of multiculturalism. Historian John Hirst wrote in 1994: "Mainstream Australian society was reduced to an ethnic group and given an ethnic name: Anglo-Celt."[7]
The Australian journalist Siobhan McHugh has argued that the term "Anglo-Celtic" is "an insidious distortion of our past and a galling denial of the struggle by an earlier minority group" - Irish Australians - "against oppression and demonisation...In what we now cosily term 'Anglo-Celtic' Australia, a virtual social apartheid existed at times between [Irish] Catholics and [British] Protestants", which did not end until the 1960s. The term was also criticised by the historian Patrick O'Farrell as "a grossly misleading, false and patronising convenience, one crassly present-oriented. Its use removes from consciousness and recognition a major conflict fundamental to any comprehension not only of Australian history but of our present core culture." [8]
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  | Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2003, "Population characteristics: Ancestry of Australia's population" - 4102.0 - Australian Social Trends, 2003 |
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