Demography is said to be destiny but, in truth, it is a more dynamic process. In the short time since the 2001 Census, for instance, there has been a sizeable level of migration to Britain from the rest of the European Union (notably the eastern assession states) that will serve to increase slightly the proportion of the population that is classified as “white” ethnically and as “Christian” or as “none” religiously. There is no long-term inevitability to short-term shifts in the population.
That will not prevent certain people from treating the information set out in the document Focus on Ethnicity and Religion, released by the Office for National Statistics yesterday, which is based on the survey conducted five years ago, as if it showed that Britain is already a “rainbow nation” and a “melting pot”. As the information published outlines, there are parts of Britain — or to be more precise London — where the ethnic and religious composition of local people is striking and without precedent in recent history. It is, however, far from the complete narrative.

Britain is not the Bronx writ large. The real picture here is of a country where ethnic and religious uniformity is largely the norm. Nearly 92 per cent of the population is white. The largest single racial minority — those of Indian descent — are less than 2 per cent of the overall population. A mere 7 per cent of local authority areas were classified as having a high level of ethnic diversity and just 3 per cent were similarly distinctive in religious alignment. It would be more accurate to state that Britain has multi-ethnic, multireligious, multicultural societies within it than to claim that society is as multiple in this manner.
This is reinforced by the evidence that diversity occurs within minority communities as well. Those of Indian extraction may be Hindu, Muslim or Christian. Black Caribbeans tend to be Christian yet many black Africans are not. Those of Chinese extraction are more reticent than almost anyone else about identifying with a religion. This is a more complex as well as a more fluid situation than some will concede.
The stereotypes about geographical concentration can also be misleading. Ethnic and religious minorities do tend to live in clusters, but the longer they have been established in Britain the more inclined they are to move. Those of Indian, Chinese or Afro-Caribbean backgrounds are spreading out into suburbia. To see these people as stuck in a hopeless ghetto is false.
There is, of course, a prominent and sensitive exception. The more concentrated minorities are those who hail from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Africa. Most of these people follow Islam. It is also the case, nevertheless, that these groups are among the most recent to have come to Britain. To assume that they will remain relatively impoverished and comparatively separated for ever is a sweeping conclusion. Indian Muslims, for example, point in a different direction. It is right that politicians of all parties should want to champion intergration into a common commun-ity. It would be a mistake, though, to exaggerate the extent to which Britain and the British are now peoples apart.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...391213,00.html