ethnicity - I find it easiest to look forwards by looking back, to the 'Great Labour Migration'1 of 1948-55, seen at the time as a matter of2 black guests coming to a white host. It's a quasi-imperial3 perception that4 has shifted since the 1970s, but the social problems and deficiencies it engendered dog5 us still. It's highly questionable whether Britain is an open society even now. Against6 the upward trend in the 1980s of ethnic minorities breaking into the professions and the media must be set objective evidence of a very racist society7. Since the Stephen Lawrence affair8 the government has at least been talking about the existence of racism, but it's always the case that racism diminishes in times of prosperity. When the economic going gets tough9, people want someone to take their feelings out on10. The social landscape11 seems to me at a surreal crossroads. Britain fosters images of itself as homogeneous12 -to be white is no longer the central defining feature-but there remain var