LONDON -- I have been coming to this city every few years for more than four decades, and this visit, of 10 days' duration, has, in some ways, been the most startling. Not that the mid-Sixties weren't. The Beatles, with every challenge to staid British routine that they personified, were in the ascendancy then, as was the miniskirt -- ever higher and higher. But the new London of 2007 is no less revealing and provocative.
London is today the multiethnic, multicultural capital of Europe, as is evident to any visitor who travels the city from corner to corner. There is a national debate going on in Britain -- a persistent and serious one in the media, on the streets, in pubs and in living rooms and Parliament. It is a debate as to which model to follow: multicultural (ethnic groups retaining their customs and traditions) or integrationist (ethnic groups assimilating into "British" categories of mores and manners).
When all is said and done, though, these models or paradigms, or whatever you call them, are merely ways of organizing and labeling ideas. The fact is that Britain is a multiethnic state, and the intercultural assimilation is flowing fast and furious both ways. Nowhere is this rich mix of cultures seen more than in London itself.