Racial discrimination and multiculturalism have been dominant themes in the fall-out from the British political party conferences of recent weeks. The realities of the discrimination that still reverberates through the nation's political, cultural and social life have made grim reading.
The Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, picked up and ran with the issue at the Labour conference when he said the British establishment did not have "a record of pride" on discrimination. Ever conscious of the soundbite, he promised not only New Labour, but also a New Britain. For all his concern about discrimination, however, and his attempts at controlling the headlines, this particular sermon was buried somewhere between the Tony Banks foetus joke and a description of John Prescott's turn on the dance-floor.
Not to be outdone, the Tories told the faithful in Blackpool and beyond that they too were concerned about the state of the nation. Lord Tebbit pronounced himself concerned about the downside of multiculturalism, declaring again that Britain's ethnic minorities "cannot uphold two sets of ethics or be loyal to two nations, any more than a man can have two masters".
Lord Tebbit had grasped the nettle: and he was stung. True, Britain has by no means come to terms with the ethnic diversity of its inhabitants. The far-right groups such as Combat 18 and the National Front, to name but two, are a testament to that. But they are a minority and Lord Tebbit's vision of "Yugoslavia" is hardly representative of attitudes in contemporary Britain.
There was no doubting that Lord Tebbit ruffled the feathers of his party leader, Mr William Hague, who dismissed him as a "dinosaur" as 15-year-old Asian Munish Chopra addressed the conference from the platform. But if Britain needed reminding that Asian faces as well as black are scarce in public life, it needed to look no further than the army and the civil service.
In recent years the British army has wrestled publicly with the sexual harassment of women, gays and lesbians in its ranks. The overwhelming image of the British army is an organisation obsessed with the social class of its officers and, crucially, unrepresentative of the country it claims to defend.
This week I was reminded of a conversation with an ex-British army officer from Northern Ireland who spoke to me about the sexual harassment he experienced from fellow soldiers when he came out as a homosexual in the 1970s. Although a particular experience for him, it was not uncommon during his spell as a soldier, or indeed for the majority of gay men in the army.
But as far as the ethnic make-up of the army is concerned, this week's recruitment drive to encourage more black and Asian applicants shed much-needed light on the race issue.
Standing in front of a Saatchi & Saatchi-inspired play on the first World War poster of Lord Kitchener, "Your Country Needs You", the Chief of the General Staff of the British army, Gen Sir Roger Wheeler, told a press conference of the army's long-term programme aimed at improving the representation of ethnic minorities. Behind him Kitchener's moustachioed face was replaced with first, a black recruit, and then an Asian man.
Gen Wheeler announced the army's intention to root out racial and sexual harassment and improve on its 1 per cent representation of ethnic minorities. "Everyone has a right to be treated with dignity and respect," he said.
"Whether we like it or not, there is a perception that the army is a racist organisation. We are determined to provide genuine equality of opportunity for everyone irrespective of their sex, marital status, race, ethnic origin, colour or religious belief."
The initiative, however long overdue, was backed by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), which earlier this year had accused the army of being "colour blind". Echoing the sentiments of another army poster showing a guardsman's rifle grasped by two hands - one black and one white - the CRE said that providing the army could beat the "enemy within" there was no reason why hundreds of black soldiers could not stand guard outside Buckingham Palace.
Another disturbing story surfaced on Sunday when the Labour MP, Mr Keith Vaz, highlighted the under-representation of Asians in the civil service. His report, entitled The Glass Ceiling, said it could take an Asian civil servant 20 years to reach the rank of permanent or deputy secretary. The report said only 1 per cent of civil servants from the top five grades were Asian, while 0.34 per cent were Afro-Caribbean.
The report produced startling figures for a New Britain under New Labour that might believe it has slowly begun to come to terms with its ethnic diversity. But "next to nothing has been done at senior level," said Mr Robyn Dasey, the assistant general secretary of the senior civil servants' group, the Firs Division Association. Mr Vaz said his report was a matter of "national shame" and belied Britain's claim to be "a non-racial society with equality of opportunity".
There have been many unhelpful words, and harsh statistics to digest. But it seems unfortunately likely that the army and the civil service are not the only organisations sitting on a disastrous record on racial discrimination.