Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet
Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet was a British politician and industrialist and one of early textile manufacturers of the Industrial Revolution. He was the father of Sir Robert Peel, twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Peel's father Robert Peel and grandfather William Peele were yeoman farmers who were engaged in the infant textile industry organised on the basis of the domestic system. Like many others, Peel joined partnerships to raise the capital required to set up spinning mills; these were water powered, thus located by rivers and streams in country districts. Thus Peel and Yates set up a housing for their workers at Burrs near Bury; as elsewhere, the shortage of labour in the rural districts was mitigated by employing pauper children as'apprentices', imported from any locality that wanted them off their hands. They were housed in a kind of hostel. Peel became quite rich, lived at Chamber Hall in Bury, where his more famous son was born. Peel was listed as a subscriber to the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal navigation in 1791.
He built the first factory in nearby Radcliffe. In politics, Peel was a staunch supporter of William Pitt the Younger; this was unusual, as many of the Lancashire mill owners were nonconformist and radical in their outlook. In 1790 he was elected Member of Parliament for Tamworth, having bought the borough along with Lord Bath's estate in the area, carried these principles into political life, he made Drayton Manor in Staffordshire his principal residence and started to adopt the lifestyle of a country gentleman. In 1800 he was created a Baronet, of Drayton Manor in the County of Stafford and of Bury in the County Palatine of Lancaster. Concerned at the working conditions for children in the cotton industry, more concerned that some of his mills had been run by their'overseers' contrary to his own paternalistic intentions, in 1802, he introduced the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act, legislation that tried to limit the number of hours that apprentice children worked in the mills, obliged the mill owners to provide some form of schooling.
In 1815, at the urging of Robert Owen, he introduced a Bill introducing stricter limits on the hours children could work in textile mills. In 1817, he retired from business, the various partnerships which had operated his mills being dissolved. In the 1818 General Election and his son William had been the two MPs returned by Tamworth in a contested election. Peel married as his first wife Ellen Yates on 8 July 1783, they had eleven children, including: Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. William Yates Peel, MP and politician. Married Lady Jane Elizabeth Moore, daughter of Stephen Moore, 2nd Earl Mount Cashell and his wife Margaret King. Edmund Peel, MP and politician General Jonathan Peel, soldier and owner of racehorses Laurence Peel, MP and politician, who married Lady Jane Lennox, daughter of Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond. Harriet Peel, who married the 2nd Baron Henley. Mary Peel who married Rt Hon George Robert Dawson and was mother to Lord Moyola's mother's father's mother.
Peel had high hopes for his children his eldest son, who he would make repeat the substance of each Sunday's sermon after mass. Peel accepted that he would not mingle with high society, but intended to prepare his son to be able to. After the death of his first wife, Peel married Susanna Clerke on 18 October 1805; the marriage was unsuccessful and the couple separated, with Susanna moving to Warwickshire. She died on 10 September 1824. Sir Robert was at the time unwell and his children represented him at the funeral. In April 1830, Sir Robert was growing frail, though he still played whist until he was too weak to deal, he was too proud to allow his nephew to deal for him, so stopped playing. Peel died in his armchair and without anyone noticing until hours later; when writing the biography of his son Robert, Douglas Hurd stated that Peel had "a good life, well sustained by family pleasures, worldly success, orthodox Christian faith and a strong practical mind". His funeral was attended by the entire "corporation of Tamworth" and sixty tenants on horseback.
In his will, an equal amount to each of his sons, except Robert, to whom he left all his lands and four times the assets left to the other sons. Peel had given Robert £230,000 during his lifetime, plus £100,000 on the event of his marriage and willed him a further £154,000. Gash, Norman. Mr. Secretary Peel: The Life of Sir Robert Peel to 1830. New York: Longmans. Hurd, Douglas. Robert Peel. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 9780297848448. Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir Robert Peel, Bt
Power-loom riots
The power-loom riots of 1826 took place in Lancashire, England, in protest against the economic hardship suffered by traditional handloom weavers caused by the widespread introduction of the much more efficient power loom. Rioting broke out on 24 April and continued for three days supported by the local population, who were sympathetic to the weavers' plight; the rioting ended. Some local manufacturers subsequently attempted to introduce a minimum wage for weavers, but were unable to obtain the support of the UK government to enforce it. England suffered economically in the years following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, in the textile towns of the industrial north wages fell as the factory system was developed. In Bolton alone, 1500 of the town's 6000 handloom weavers were out of work in 1826, 1500 were on half work. A weaver who in 1792 could have expected to earn six shillings a day was by 1826 earning less than six shillings a week for a sixteen-hour day, in a period when the price of staples such as bread and meat had doubled.
Rioting broke out in the east of Lancashire on 24 April 1826. The first of 21 mills to be attacked was the Higher Grange Lane Factory in Accrington; the rioters marched on to Blackburn on the second day. On the third and final day of rioting the military were called upon to defend a mill in Chatterton against 3000 rioters, six of whom were shot and killed when the crowd refused to disperse after the Riot Act had been read to them; the rioters were supported locally, not only by fellow handloom weavers. Amongst those arrested in Blackburn, for instance, were labourers, a farmer, a confectioner, a butcher and power-loom weavers. An eye-witness to the rioting in Chorley noted that "there can be no doubt that a great multitude of the townspeople were their friends; the women supplied the rioters with stones, concealing the missiles under their aprons."Some of the soldiers sent to confront the rioters seemed sympathetic to their plight. One 16-year-old handloom weaver from Haslingden, Thomas Duckworth, records that on the first day of rioting the group he was marching with encountered a number of mounted soldiers approaching them with drawn swords.
The officers in charge appealed to the mob to disperse. In Duckworth's own words: Some of the old fellows from the mob spoke, they said "What are we to do? We're starving. Are we to starve to death?" The soldiers were equipped with haversacks and they emptied their sandwiches among the crowd. The soldiers left and there was another meeting. Were the power-looms to be broken or not? Yes, it was decided, they must be broken at all cost; the riots ended after local magistrates swore in a large number of special constables to arrest about 20 of the ringleaders "in the dead of night". During the course of the rioting more than 1000 power looms were destroyed. A number of manufacturers subsequently agreed to pay a standard rate to the weavers, but on their own admission it was a "starvation" wage; the manufacturers who stuck to the agreement found it difficult to compete with those who did not, could therefore undercut them, prompting an appeal to William Huskisson, the President of the Board of Trade, to introduce a binding minimum wage.
Huskisson's response was dismissive, expressing his view that to introduce such a measure would be "a vain and hazardous attempt to impose the authority of the law between the labourer and his employer in regulating the demand for labour and the price to be paid for it"
Fire services in the United Kingdom
The fire services in the United Kingdom operate under separate legislative and administrative arrangements in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland. Emergency cover is provided by over fifty agencies; these are known as a fire and rescue service, the term used in modern legislation and by government departments. The older terms of fire brigade and fire service survive in informal usage and in the names of a few organisations. England and Wales have local fire services which are each overseen by a fire authority, made up of representatives of local governments. Fire authorities have the power to raise a Council Tax levy for funding, with the remainder coming from the government. Scotland and Northern Ireland have centralised fire services, so their authorities are committees of the devolved parliaments; the total budget for fire services in 2014-15 was £2.9 billion. Central government maintains national standards and a body of independent advisers through the Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser, created in 2007, while Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services provides direct oversight.
The devolved government in Scotland has HMFSI Scotland. Firefighters in the United Kingdom are allowed to join unions, the main one being the Fire Brigades Union, while chief fire officers are members of the National Fire Chiefs Council, which has some role in national co-ordination; the fire services have undergone significant changes since the beginning of the 21st century, a process, propelled by a devolution of central government powers, new legislation and a change to operational procedures in the light of terrorism attacks and threats. See separate article History of fire safety legislation in the United Kingdom Comprehensive list of recent UK fire and rescue service legislation: Fire services are established and granted their powers under new legislation which has replaced a number of Acts of Parliament dating back more than 60 years, but is still undergoing change. 1938: Fire Brigades Act 1938. This Act provided for centralised co-ordination of fire brigades in Great Britain and made it mandatory for local authorities to arrange an effective fire service.
1947: Fire Services Act 1947 This Act transferred the functions of the National Fire Service to local authorities. Now repealed in England and Wales by Schedule 2 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004. 1959: Fire Services Act 1959 This Act amended the 1947 Act. It was repealed in Wales along with the 1947 Act. 1999: Greater London Authority Act 1999 This act was necessary to allow for the formation of the Greater London Authority and in turn the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. In 2002, there was a series of national fire strikes, with much of the discontent caused by the aforementioned report into the fire service conducted by Prof Sir George Bain. In December 2002, the Independent Review of the Fire Service was published with the industrial action still ongoing. Bain's report led to a change in the laws relating to firefighting. 2002: Independent Review of the Fire Service published 2004: Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 only applying to England and Wales. 2006: The Regulatory Reform Order 2005 This piece of secondary legislation or statutory instrument replaces several other acts that dealt with fire precautions and fire safety in premises, including the now defunct process of issuing fire certificates.
It came into force on 1 October 2006. The DfCLG has published a set of guides for non-domestic premises: 2006: The Government of Wales Act 2006 gave the National Assembly for Wales powers to pass laws on "Fire and rescue services. Promotion of fire safety otherwise than by prohibition or regulation." But does not prevent future legislation being passed by the UK government which applies to two or more constituent countries. There are further plans to modernise the fire service according to the Local Government Association, its website outlines future changes, specific projects: "The aim of the Fire Modernisation Programme is to adopt modern work practices within the Fire & Rescue Service to become more efficient and effective, while strengthening the contingency and resilience of the Service to react to incidents. " The fire service in England and Wales is scrutinised by a House of Commons select committee. In June 2006, the fire and rescue service select committee, under the auspices of the Communities and Local Government Committee, published its latest report.
Committee report The committee's brief is described on its website: The Communities and Local Government Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure and policy of the Department for Communities and Local Government and its associated bodies. Government response This document, the subsequent government response in September 2006, are important as they outlined progress on the FiReControl, efforts to address diversity and the planned closure of HMFSI in 2007 among many issues. Both documents are interesting as they refer back to Professor Bain's report and the many recommendations it made and continue to put forward the notion that there is an ongoing need to modernise FRSs. For example, where FRSs were inspected by HMFSI, much of this work is now carried out by the National Audit Office. Fire Control On 8 February 2010 the House of Commons Communities and Local Governm
Calico
Calico is a plain-woven textile made from unbleached and not processed cotton. It may contain unseparated husk parts, for example; the fabric is far less fine than muslin, but less coarse and thick than canvas or denim, but it is still cheap owing to its unfinished and undyed appearance. The fabric was from the city of Calicut in southwestern India, it was made by the traditional weavers called cāliyans. The raw fabric was dyed and printed in bright hues, calico prints became popular in Europe. Calico originated in southwestern India during the 11th century; the cloth was known as "cāliyan" to the natives. It was mentioned in Indian literature by the 12th century when the writer Hēmacandra described calico fabric prints with a lotus design. By the 15th century calico from Gujǎrāt made its appearance in Egypt. Trade with Europe followed from the 17th century onwards. Calico was woven using Sūrat cotton for both the weft. In the 18th century, England was famous for its worsted cloth; that industry, centred in the east and south in towns such as Norwich, jealously protected their product.
Cotton processing was tiny: in 1701 only 1,985,868 pounds of cottonwool was imported into England, by 1730 this had fallen to 1,545,472 pounds. This was due to commercial legislation to protect the woollen industry. Cheap calico prints, imported by the East India Company from Hindustān, had become popular. In 1700 an Act of Parliament passed to prevent the importation of dyed or printed calicoes from India, China or Persia; this caused demand to switch to imported grey cloth instead—calico that had not been finished—dyed or printed. These were printed with popular patterns in southern England. Lancashire businessmen produced grey cloth with linen warp and cotton weft, known as fustian, which they sent to London for finishing. Cottonwool imports recovered though, by 1720 were back to their 1701 levels. Again the woollen manufacturers, in true protectionist fashion, claimed that the imports were taking jobs away from workers in Coventry. A new law passed, enacting fines against anyone caught wearing stained calico muslins.
Neckcloths and fustians were exempted. The Lancashire manufacturers exploited this exemption. There now was an artificial demand for woven cloth. In 1764, 3,870,392 pounds of cotton-wool were imported; this change in consumption patterns, as a result of the restriction on imported finished goods, was a key part of the process that reduced the Indian economy from sophisticated textile production to the mere supply of raw materials. These events occurred under colonial rule, which started after 1757, were described by Nehru and some more recent scholars as "de-industrialization." Early Indian chintz, that is, glazed calico with a large floral pattern. Were produced by painting techniques; the hues were applied by wooden blocks, the cloth manufacturers in Britain printing calico used wooden block printing. Calico printers at work are depicted in one of the stained glass windows made by Stephen Adam for the Maryhill Burgh Halls, Glasgow. Confusingly and silk printed this way were known as linen calicoes and silk calicoes.
Early European calicoes would be cheap plain-weave white cotton fabric with equal weft and warp plain weave cotton fabric in, or cream or unbleached cotton, with a design block-printed using a single alizarin dye fixed with two mordants, giving a red and black pattern. Polychromatic prints were possible, using two sets of an additional blue dye; the Indian taste was for dark printed backgrounds while the European market preferred a pattern on a cream base. As the century progressed the European preference moved from the large chintz patterns to smaller, tighter patterns. Thomas Bell patented a printing technique in 1783 that used copper rollers, Livesey and Company put the first machine that used it into operation near Preston, Lancashire in 1785; the production volume for printed cloth in Lancashire in 1750 was estimated at 50,000 pieces of 30 yards In 1850 it was 20,000,000 pieces. After 1888, block printing was only used for short-run specialized jobs. After 1880, profits from printing fell due to overcapacity and the firms started to form combines.
In the first, three Scottish firms formed the United Turkey Red Co. Ltd in 1897, the second, in 1899, was the much larger Calico Printers' Association 46 printing concerns and 13 merchants combined, representing 85% of the British printing capacity; some of this capacity was removed and in 1901 Calico had 48% of the printing trade. In 1916, they and the other printers formed and joined a trade association, which set minimum prices for each'price section' of the industry; the trade association remained in operation until 1954, when the arrangement was challenged by the government Monopolies Commission. Over the intervening period much trade had been lost overseas. In the UK, Australia and New Zealand: Calico – simple, cheap equal weft and warp plain weave fabric in white, cream or unbleached cotton. Muslin – a fine, light plain weave cotton fabric. Muslin gauze – muslin. Gauze – soft and fine cotton fabric with a open plain weave. Cheesecloth – gauze. In the US: Calico – cotton fabric with a small, all-over floral print Muslin – simple, cheap equal weft and warp plain weave fabric in white, cream or unbleached cotton and/or a fine, light plain weave cotton fabric.
Muslin gauze – the lightest, most open weave of muslin. Gauze – any light fabric, genera
Blackburn
Blackburn is a town in Lancashire, England. It lies to the north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the Ribble Valley, 9 miles east of Preston, 20.9 miles NNW of Manchester and 9 miles north of the Greater Manchester border. Blackburn is bounded to the south by Darwen, with which it forms the unitary authority of Blackburn with Darwen. At the time of the UK Government's 2001 census, Blackburn had a population of 105,085, whilst the wider borough of Blackburn with Darwen had a population of 140,700. Blackburn had a population of 117,963 in 2011, a massive increase since 2001. A former mill town, textiles have been produced in Blackburn since the middle of the 13th century, when wool was woven in people's houses in the domestic system. Flemish weavers who settled in the area during the 14th century helped to develop the woollen cottage industry. James Hargreaves, inventor of the spinning jenny, was a weaver in Oswaldtwistle near Blackburn, the most rapid period of growth and development in Blackburn's history coincided with the industrialisation and expansion of textile manufacturing.
Blackburn was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution and amongst the first industrialised towns in the world. Blackburn's textile sector fell into terminal decline from the mid-20th century and subsequently faced similar challenges to other post-industrial northern towns, including deindustrialisation, economic deprivation and housing issues. In recent decades, the town has experienced high levels of immigration, with people of ethnic backgrounds other than white British making up 30.8% of the population, above the regional and national average. Blackburn has had significant investment and redevelopment since 1958 through government funding and the European Regional Development Fund. Blackburn was recorded in the Domesday Book as Blacheborne in 1086; the origins of the name are uncertain. It has been suggested that it may be a combination of an Old English word for bleach, together with a form of the word "burn", meaning stream, may be associated with a bleaching process. Alternatively, the name of the town may mean "black burn", or "black stream".
There is little evidence of prehistoric settlement in the Blakewater valley, in which Blackburn developed. Evidence of activity in the form of two urn burials has been discovered from the Bronze Age in the hills around Blackburn. In 1879, a cinerary urn was discovered at a tumulus at Revidge, north of the town; the presence of a sacred spring—perhaps in use during the Iron Age—provides evidence of prehistoric activity in the town centre, at All Hallows Spring on Railway Road. Blackburn is located; the road linked Bremetennacum Mamucium. The route of the road passed east of Blackburn Cathedral and crossed the river in the Salford neighbourhood just east of the modern town centre, it is not clear. All Hallows Spring was excavated in early archaeology in 1654 and found to contain an inscribed stone commemorating the dedication of a temple to Serapis by Claudius Hieronymus, legate of Legio VI Victrix. Christianity is believed to have come to Blackburn by the end of the 6th century in 596 as there is a record of a "church of Blagbourne" in that year, or 598 AD.
The town was important during the Anglo-Saxon era when the Blackburnshire Hundred came into existence as a territorial division of the kingdom of Northumbria. The name of the town appears in the Domesday Book as Blachebourne, a royal manor during the days of Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror. Archaeological evidence from the demolition of the medieval parish church on the site of the cathedral in 1820 suggests that a church was built during the late 11th or early 12th century. A market cross was erected nearby in 1101; the manor came into the possession of Henry de Blackburn. One half was granted to the monks of Stanlow Abbey and this moiety was subsequently granted to the monks of Whalley Abbey. During the 12th century, the town's importance declined. In addition to a settlement in the town centre area, there were several other medieval domiciles nearby. Textile manufacturing in Blackburn dates from the mid-13th century, when wool produced locally by farmers was woven in their homes.
Flemish weavers who settled in the area in the 14th century developed the industry. By 1650 the town was known for the manufacture of blue and white "Blackburn checks", "Blackburn greys" became famous not long afterwards. By the first half of the 18th century textile manufacture had become Blackburn's main industry. From the mid-18th to the early 20th century Blackburn evolved from a small market town into "the weaving capital of the world", its population increased from less than 5,000 to over 130,000. John Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles provides a profile of Blackburn in 1887: Blackburn. Parl. and mun. bor. parish and township, NE. Lancashire, 9 miles E. of Preston and 210 miles NW. of London by rail – par. 48,281 ac. pop. 161,617. 91,958. 104,014. Market-days and Saturday, it is one besides producing calico, muslin, & c. There being over 140 mills at work. There are factories for making cotton machinery and steam-engines. B. has been associated with many improvements in the mfr. of cotton, among, the invention of the "spinni
Kingdom of Northumbria
The Kingdom of Northumbria was a medieval Anglian kingdom in what is now Northern England and south-east Scotland. The name derives from the Old English Norþan-hymbre meaning "the people or province north of the Humber", which reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary. Northumbria started to consolidate into one kingdom in the early seventh century, when the two earlier core territories of Deira and Bernicia entered into a dynastic union. At its height, the kingdom extended from the Humber, Peak District and the River Mersey on the south to the Firth of Forth on the north. Northumbria ceased to be an independent kingdom in the mid-tenth century, though a rump Earldom of Bamburgh survived around Bernicia in the north to be absorbed into the mediaeval kingdoms of Scotland and England. Today, Northumbria refers to a smaller region corresponding to the counties of Northumberland, County Durham and Tyne and Wear in North East England; the term is used in the names of some North East regional institutions the Northumbria Police, (based in Newcastle upon Tyne, the Northumbria Army Cadet Force, the regionalist Northumbrian Association.
The local Environment Agency office, located in Newcastle Business Park uses the term Northumbria to describe its area. However, the term is not the official name for the EU region of North East England; the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria was two kingdoms divided around the River Tees: Bernicia was to the north of the river and Deira to the south. It is possible that both regions originated as native British Kingdoms which the Germanic settlers conquered, although there is little information about the infrastructure and culture of the British kingdoms themselves. Much of the evidence for them comes from regional names that are British rather than Anglo-Saxon in origin; the names Deira and Bernicia are British in origin, for example, indicating that some British place names retained currency after the Anglo-Saxon migrations to Northumbria. There is some archeological evidence to support British origins for the polities of Bernicia and Deira. In what would have been southern Bernicia, in the Cheviot Hills, a hill fort at Yeavering called Yeavering Bell contains evidence that it was an important centre for first the British and the Anglo-Saxons.
The fort is pre-Roman, dating back to the Iron Age at around the first century. In addition to signs of Roman occupation, the site contains evidence of timber buildings that pre-date Germanic settlement in the area that are signs of British settlement. Moreover, Brian Hope-Taylor has traced the origins of the name Yeavering, which looks deceptively English, back to the British gafr from Bede's mention of a township called Gefrin in the same area. Yeavering continued to be an important political centre after the Anglo-Saxons began settling in the north, as King Edwin had a royal palace at Yeavering. Overall, English place-names dominate the Northumbrian landscape, suggesting the prevalence of an Anglo-Saxon elite culture by the time that Bede—one of Anglo-Saxon England's most prominent historians—was writing in the eighth century. According to Bede, the Angles predominated the Germanic immigrants that settled north of the Humber and gained political prominence during this time period. While the British natives may have assimilated into the Northumbrian political structure contemporary textual sources such as Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People depict relations between Northumbrians and the British as fraught.
The Anglo-Saxon countries of Bernicia and Deira were in conflict before their eventual semi-permanent unification in 654. Political power in Deira was concentrated in the East Riding of Yorkshire, which included York, the North York Moors, the Vale of York; the political heartlands of Bernicia were the areas around Bamburgh and Lindisfarne and Jarrow, in Cumbria, west of the Pennines in the area around Carlisle. The name that these two countries united under, may have been coined by Bede and made popular through his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Information on the early royal genealogies for Bernicia and Deira comes from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People and Welsh chronicler Nennius’ Historia Brittonum. According to Nennius, the Bernician royal line begins with son of Eoppa. Ida was able to annex Bamburgh to Bernicia. In Nennius’ genealogy of Deira, a king named Soemil was the first to separate Bernicia and Deira, which could mean that he wrested the kingdom of Deira from the native British.
The date of this supposed separation is unknown. The first Deiran king to make an appearance in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum is Ælle, the father of the first Roman Catholic Northumbrian king Edwin. A king of Bernicia, Ida's grandson Æthelfrith, was the first ruler to unite the two polities under his rule, he exiled the Deiran Edwin to the court of King Rædwald of the East Angles in order to claim both kingdoms, but Edwin returned in 616 to conquer Northumbria with Rædwald's aid. Edwin, who ruled from 616 to 633, was one of the last kings of the Deiran line to reign over all of Northumbria. Oswald's brother Oswiu succeeded him to the Northumbrian throne despite initial attempts on Deira's part to pull away again. Although the Bernician line became the royal line of Northumbria
United Kingdom census, 2001
A nationwide census, known as Census 2001, was conducted in the United Kingdom on Sunday, 29 April 2001. This was the 20th UK census and recorded a resident population of 58,789,194; the 2001 UK census was organised by the Office for National Statistics in England and Wales, the General Register Office for Scotland and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. Detailed results by region, council area and output area are available from their respective websites. Similar to previous UK censuses, the 2001 census was organised by the three statistical agencies, ONS, GROS, NISRA, coordinated at the national level by the Office for National Statistics; the Orders in Council to conduct the census, specifying the people and information to be included in the census, were made under the authority of the Census Act 1920 in Great Britain, the Census Act 1969 in Northern Ireland. In England and Wales these regulations were made by the Census Order 2000, in Scotland by the Census Order 2000, in Northern Ireland by the Census Order 2000.
The census was administered through self-completion forms, in most cases delivered by enumerators to households and communal establishments in the three weeks before census night on 29 April. For the first time return by post was used as the main collection method, with enumerators following up in person where the forms were not returned; the postal response rate was 88% in England and Wales, 91% in Scotland, 92% in Northern Ireland. A total of 81,000 field staff were employed across the UK; the census was conducted at the height of the foot-and-mouth crisis, which led to extra precautions being adopted by the field staff, suggestions that the census may have to be postponed. However, it was reported that the disease outbreak did not affect the effectiveness of the collection process; the census was estimated to cost £259m over its 13-year cycle from the start of planning in 1993 to the delivery of final results in 2006. Printing of the 30 million census forms was subcontracted to Polestar Group, processing of the returned census forms was subcontracted to Lockheed Martin in a contract worth £54m.
The forms were scanned into digital format read with OMR and OCR, with manual entry where the automatic process could not read the forms. The forms were pulped and recycled, the digital copies printed onto microfilm for storage and release after 100 years. Once the data were returned to the statistics agencies it underwent further processing to ensure consistency and to impute missing values; the overall response rate for the census, the proportion of the population who were included on a census form, was estimated to be 94% in England and Wales, 96.1% in Scotland and 95.2% in Northern Ireland. This was due to a number of factors: households with no response, households excluding residents from their returns, addresses not included in the enumeration. In Manchester for example 25,000 people from 14,000 addresses were not enumerated because the address database was two years out of date; the Local Authority with the lowest response was Kensington and Chelsea with 64%. Hackney had the next lowest response at 72%.
Out of all local authorities, the ten lowest response rates were all in London. The results still represent 100 per cent of the population, because some individuals not completing their forms were instead identified by census enumerators, through the use of cross-matching with a follow-up survey; the results from the 2001 census were produced using a methodology known as the One Number Census. This was an attempt to adjust the census counts and impute answers to allow for estimated under-enumeration measured by the Census Coverage Survey, resulting in a single set of population estimates. Although the 1851 census had included a question about religion on a separate response sheet, whose completion was not compulsory, the 2001 census was the first in Great Britain to ask about the religion of respondents on the main census form. An amendment to the 1920 Census Act was passed by Parliament to allow the question to be asked, to allow the response to this question to be optional; the inclusion of the question enabled the Jedi census phenomenon to take place in the United Kingdom.
In England and Wales 390,127 people stated their religion as Jedi. The percentages of religious affiliations were: Christian: 72.0% Muslim: 3% Hindu: 1% Sikh: 0.6% Jewish: 0.5% Buddhist: 0.3% Any other religion: 0.3%15% declared themselves of no religion and 8% did not respond to the question. After the 2001 census it became clear that the statistics for those adhering to the Neopagan group of religions were inaccurately recorded; this was caused by a dilution of statistics, with some adherents entering "Pagan" and others entering their individual religions such as "Wiccan" or "Druid", which fall under the umbrella term of "Pagan", leaving a significant number of people unaccounted for. The situation was worsened when the Heathenism statistics were grouped in with Atheism by the Office for National Statistics; the Pagan Federation and the "PaganDash" campaign lobbied for a separate tickbox for Paganism on the 2011 census, but were unsuccessful. The census ethnic groups included White, Asian or Asian British, Black or Black British (
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