In its way the ‘Living History Forum’ crystallised the problem piled upon problem that post-war immigration across Europe had presented. Even as events were occurring before the public’s eyes the authorities refused to concede that what was happening was anything new. When they did concede it they could only dress it up as an opportunity for the country. Nowhere was there a willingness to concede that some public suspicion about the consequences of these movements might be justified. From the 1950s onwards the continent had been united in a tendency to underestimate the number of people expected to arrive and then to massively overestimate the country’s ability to integrate those arrivals. There were few moments of humility from the people who were making these decisions, not even over one of the grandest and most evident failings, which was the unwillingness to notice that the immigrant groups who came to Europe might have different views not just from mainstream society, but from each other, and that these facts would bring consequences of their own.

Nothing demonstrates this failure in the multicultural and ‘post-multicultural’ eras better than the fact that the ideologies –political and religious – of the incomers were rarely a subject of consideration and were almost never a permissible subject for debate. So it was that in each country post-war immigration was discussed when it was discussed as an issue of race. The racial identities of the incomers were discussed and any and all concerns raised about this were returned along the terms of anti-racism. What very few people saw or mentioned was that the racial background of incomers was an insignificant matter alongside the far greater issue of creed. When Moroccans first came to Holland in large numbers they were discussed as Moroccans. When Pakistanis first came to Britain in large numbers they were discussed as Pakistanis. The same went for Turks in Germany. But around the turn of the millennium the period of multi-faithism crept up on Europe and the significance of the race of migrant groups declined, Europe began to wonder whether the issue was not in fact religion. It was a subject that took most politicians and commentators in Western Europe entirely by surprise.