So it was enormously refreshing to hear Nick Clegg offer up a well-informed speech on the quest for true race equality, without a negative backdrop.

Delivering a Scarman Lecture on the 30th anniversary of the ground-breaking report into the 1981 Brixton riots, Clegg gave arguably the best speech on race equality by a Cabinet minister.

It was Liberal Democracy at its best, bravely shattering the conspiracy of silence on one of the biggest issues of the day – the scandal of the shockingly disproportionate outcomes for black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

As I listened, the question of what took us so long was eclipsed by a swelling pride; this was what I always believed social liberalism was all about.

Stepping into the arena of race from a progressive standpoint is always going to attract a hail of brickbats from the right but the great Liberals of yesteryear always faced down the howls of reactionaries.

Clegg located the issue firmly in the context of our party’s tradition. He said:

The state-led, law-led approach can only take you part of the way. If you assume the state has all the answers, you absolve other parts of society from playing their part. You let businesses off the hook and you discourage activity in the wider community to support young, enterprising men and women from ethnic minorities too.

In focussing on economic injustice he touched on hidden factors, often invisible even to the victims, and shone a much-needed light on the subtle dynamics of racism in today’s society.

African-Caribbean unemployment is running at twice the rate of white unemployment. So few British-born people of colour sit in the top City boardrooms. So few would-be entrepreneurs are getting bank loans to start a new business.

Clegg’s speech demonstrated that Liberals can indeed shape a discourse that has hitherto been a depressing bun fight between Labour supporters and the forces of conservatism.

Too often Liberals have opted out of this debate, taking refuge in purist colour-blindness when all around is evidence of racial discrimination.

Clegg has shown we can have the confidence to propose solutions to succeed in challenging the casual racism which contributes to the hugely unfair outcomes and undermines justice in our whole society.

If we back our words up with far-reaching policies, Lib Dems can look back with pride in years to come and say: at the very time when the issue race equality was at its’ most unpopular, we took the mantle and made great inroads to making Britain a fairer place for people of colour.

What was notable about the first wave of attack, in the  threads of online news stories, was how inarticulate the response was. Few critics took on Clegg’s arguments, instead resorting to abuse.

If we, as a party, can face this down and drive forward, we will be remembered for it.

It requires turning words into actions. The inquiry into bank lending, led by Andrew Stunell and Lynne Featherstone, is a start. But much more is needed.

As Clegg rightly pointed out, it is in Britain’s economic interests not to waste talent. He said:

If we tapped into the full potential of our black and ethnic minority communities, imagine the benefits and prosperity that would bring? Now is the moment to unleash black talent, for the good of us all.

Black and Asian people are estimated to earn £165 billion a year after tax, but it could be so much higher. Conversely the cost to the taxpayer of disproportionate educational under-achievement, unemployment and criminal justice is in the a huge drain on the state.

Deal with school exclusions, create a level playing field with job opportunities and entrepreneurship, and all Britain will be better off.

Generations have lost out because colour-blind policies of successive governments either caused, or failed to deal with, underlining racial inequalities.

Some political ideas may benefit BME communities in theory – our coalition policy of raising of the tax threshold is one. But how it pans out in reality is another story.

There is nothing illiberal about seeking to change outcomes; it is conservative not to. Changing outcomes for Britain’s BME communities means being radical, or to put it another way, being Liberal – in the old-fashioned sense.

We need an holistic and radical vision, applying our solutions to every aspect of life where hard figures tell us unequal racial outcomes are stark.

Two-fifths of BME households live in poverty, double the rate of white households. African and Caribbean youths are nine times more likely to be stopped and searched.

There is much that the state can do to change this.

There is also much that grassroots and political pressure can do to encourage the private sector to employ diverse talent.

Lord Scarman called for a “direct coordinated attack on racial disadvantage”. In his speech, Clegg responded: “It’s time we resurrected the Scarman sprit to tackle the lack of opportunities for our ethnic communities. The barriers built into everyday life.”

It was Dr Martin Luther King who said true peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice. Let us be for racial justice, not in just theory but in practice.

In a groundbreaking move that was sadly unreported, the London Region recently agreed to introduce positive action in a bid to get at least one BAME hopeful onto the London Assembly, a body that represents a city where over a third of the population is from an ethnic minority.

The decision to reserve places – quotas by another name – on the ‘top-up list’ means the Lib Dems have gone further than any other political party in this area. There is no doubt that we, more than any other, needed to take concrete measures to tackle the current woeful lack of BAME representation.

I believe the London Region is establishing an important principle: that drastic situations call for brave measures. If we fail to address the image of an all-white party our reputation alone will put off future black and Asian people from joining, and the vicious cycle will continue. It’s what happened to the Conservatives until David Cameron broke the chain by taking unofficial positive action by stealth.

Let’s not kid ourselves about exactly how big the elephant in the room has grown. Just the mention of ‘Liberal Democrat’ to many black and Asian people now frequently brings a retort about how unrepresentative we are.

That’s why we need change now, because while the backroom measures put in place by Nick Clegg, such as the Diversity Unit and the New Generation initiative, are welcome they are aiming at the medium to long term. We cannot afford to wait that long; our brand will become too toxified.

That is why I am pleased the London Executive of the party has agreed to designate one place in the top four spots for someone from a BAME background, and two in the top six. Two of the top four places will be for women.

Although the party currently has just three seats in City Hall there used to be five, so while these changes don’t exactly guarantee a BAME Lib Dem assembly member, it is nevertheless one giant leap away from the status quo. Under the existing selection system I would have bet my house on seeing another all-white London team in 2012. Now there is more than an evens chance it won’t be.

I hope the action taken in London encourages other areas of the party to embrace changes needed to bring about a genuinely representative party. It needs to be a springboard for further action elsewhere.

Not only do we lack a single BAME Member of Parliament, but also any Euro MEPs, Welsh or London assembly members, and Scottish MSPs. And there’s a serious issue at local council level too, including some boroughs with a high proportion of BAME residents.

As Ben Moody noted recently on The Guardian’s Comment Is Free, objections from Lib Dem members to positive action often places a greater value on the rights those who are excluded – mainly white, middle-class men – than the need to reflect the diversity of society.

At a time when we have had to swallow a good number of sometimes unpalatable Tory policies for the greater good of Britain it would be perverse it we then drew the wagons around protecting internal selection procedures which continue to produce results that make us the most unrepresentative party.

The embarrassment of having an all-white Commons team before the election was intensified by Labour and the Conservatives almost doubling the number of BAME MPs at the poll – up from 14 to 27. We have now failed to elect any MP of colour at a general election since 1892, when Dadabhai Naoroji made history as the first.

Individually we may believe our intentions are good but the bigger picture tells us that exclusion is going on. The outcome is illiberal, and reluctance to do what is necessary to improve the situation deeply conservative.

As a party founded by Methodists who were at the forefront of the struggle to abolish slavery in the 19th Century I see no reason why we cannot today be a party that is fully representative of society – including race and gender. We should also lead the debate nationally on equality, yet how can we be expected to be taken seriously when we do not practice what we preach.

Addressing an Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors conference recently, deputy leader Simon Hughes urged those present to consider reserved places for BAMEs, and added he was not opposed in principle to all-BAME shortlists. Encouragingly there was no opposition from the floor, hopefully a sign that we have now turned a corner.

Before the general election, Clegg said that if all-BAME shortlists were legal he would consider adopting them for “the election after next” if other programmes did not deliver results. That’s now the forthcoming election. I support the recommendations of the Speaker’s Conference, in particular the call for enabling legislation to give parties the option of introducing all-BAME shortlists if they wish.

It is no longer acceptable to simply raise objections about measures being ‘illiberal’. We need to hear what alternatives are on offer that will equally deliver the results needed.

As a member of the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats, I can reveal that we are proposing a motion to Annual Conference that calls for a reserved place for at least one BAME member on the shortlist whenever a sitting Liberal Democrat MP retires, any by-elections where a Liberal Democrat MP resigns, and seats which require a five percent or less swing.

EMLD is also calling for reserved places for all multi-member ‘constituencies’ for selecting candidates for MEPs, MSPs, AMs and local council candidates, based on Office of National Statistics populations in each area.

The old nostrum that “we want them but they just aren’t coming forward” is not quite true. We already have a good deal of the excellent emerging BAME members, and positive action measures will allow their talents to shine. I confidently predict that local members will be impressed by many hopefuls who, at present, are just not getting to selection contests.

As a party we need to grasp the nettle in order to promote the talent we currently have and attract the next generation. But we need to act fast before the legion of future MPs, who were inspired first by Barack Obama and then by Nick Clegg, are not lost to politics, or at least to us.

To miss out on this huge pool of talent doesn’t make business sense. But it’s not just about getting black and brown faces elected, it’s about what they can contribute. People from BAME backgrounds bring experiences and perspectives that can enrich politics, contributing to ‘mainstream’ issues and bringing expertise on how to tackle the entrenched unequal racial outcomes.

Lester Holloway is a councillor in Sutton, an Executive member of Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats and ‘race champion’ for the London Region

As a party we really need to start learning some lessons from these regular blows because I, for one, am tired and frankly quite bored of witnessing the same depressing spiral of losing bright young BAME talent followed by a debate more notable for its heat than light, as the membership lob brickbats at the defectors.

All too often there is precious little by way of actual solutions to improve racial diversity in the party, but no shortage of insults. Arrogant, selfish and over-ambitious individuals who saw advancement in the party as their entitlement… good riddance to these jumped-up scumbags, I hear you say. Over and over again.

The trouble is, once we’ve stopped furiously kicking up sand there is virtually no energy left to tackle perhaps the biggest elephant in the room – our failure to look like a diverse party. Having made significant in-road in the inner cities, the lack of visible diversity is one crucial blockage we must clear in order to surge into Labour’s ‘territory’, where they have taken black and Asian votes for granted for so long.

Given the virtual collapse of Labour, I suspect if we had got serious about diversity earlier, then by now the whole party would be feeling the benefits of BAME communities supporting us in greater numbers. Let’s not forget a borough-by-borough breakdown of the European Elections in the capital seemed to indicate that neighbourhoods with the highest BAME populations continued to be wedded to Labour, despite everything.

Proportionally, BAME communities appear to be the last section of the electorate still prepared to vote Labour in any numbers, even though most indicators of race inequality have hardly improved over the past 13 years.

The sad fact is that we Lib Dems are still failing to convince enough black and Asian people that we are a diverse party which understands the multicultural society they are part of. This is especially true in the large chunks of London where we do not have a major local presence.

Polling by Operation Black Vote has shown just how highly BAME voters rate the issue of ‘Black political representation’ as a reason to support one party over another. If we are to properly respond to this we need to challenge gut instincts that reject ‘putting people in boxes’ or fret about a ‘silo’ approach, because the desire of people from ethnic minorities to be treated equally, and not to be pigeon-holed, is just one side of the coin.

Most of the same ethnic minorities also agree that institutional racism and unequal racial outcomes need to be challenged and, like it or not, this process requires us to see colour and analyse why discrimination happens on different levels. Quite often that means targeting BAME communities, where they are under-represented, or altering structures when attitudes of officials (or party members) are not changing fast enough.

After Bhatti’s defection I wrote on the Lib Dem Voice Members’ Forum that we cannot afford to sit back and wait for the next defection. Action not recrimination was the order of the day. This is exactly what Nick Clegg and Chris Fox, working with Ethnic Minority Lib Dems (EMLD), led by Meral Eçe, have been doing. The New Generation, launched earlier this month, aims to provide personal development and media training for BAME candidates. We also have a good diversity officer in Issan Ghazni.

After years of token moves and good intentions that don’t deliver, finally under the current leadership we have something approaching a solid programme. I am excited that this initiative is heading in the right direction, but even this is only half the battle. The other half is the party at large demonstrating a passion to provide BAME members with the same support and encouragement that is available to white young members born into Liberal households, for example.

And if BAME members are ambitious to succeed in the party, not treating them with any more suspicion than white people from privileged backgrounds. For all the accusations flung and the Fernandos and Bhatti about assuming ‘entitlement’, few can match Oxbridge graduates for delusions of entitlement.

The New Generation project can polish BAME members to a mirror finish, but it is the party that select and campaign for candidates. Unless there is a greater shift in culture and attitudes, my own view is that we should consider ‘un-liberal’ measures like all-BAME shortlists to force change, for the sake of the party.

Nobody wants to see measures imposed from above, not least in such a federal party as ours, but I am clear about what is far worse: continuing to have not a single MP, MEP or regional assembly or parliament member from a visible minority.

There is, to borrow a phrase from Barack Obama, a ‘fierce urgency of now’ to work together and bring about more diverse party. So are we ready? The membership’s reaction to BAME defections indicates ‘no’, but I remain hopeful that the smell of coffee will yet waft up our collective nostrils. Become a truly diverse party? Yes, we can!

* is a member of the New Generation initiative and former editor of New Nation, and news editor of The Voice. He is currently freelancing and editor of OBV Blog.