"When a young black student, filled with talent, is murdered by racist thugs, and Stephen Lawrence becomes a household name - not because of the trial into his murder but because of an inquiry into why his murderers are walking free - it is not just wrong, it weakens the very bonds of decency and respect we need to make our country strong."
The great "movation" apart, this passage in Tony Blair's speech to the Labour conference last month won perhaps the most spontaneous and heartfelt applause from the delegates in Blackpool.
Sir Paul Condon, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, would subsequently admit that the handling of the Stephen Lawrence case had had a shaming effect on his force. But the Labour faithful already knew the truth of that. As they roared their approval for Mr Blair's comments, one felt the acute awareness, the hideous embarrassment, above all, the very positive anxiety, that - for all the (in many ways wholly legitimate) boasts of Britain's advance toward true multi-culturalism - the cancer of racism remains a reality.
Many commentators that conference week, reflecting their particular interests and agendas, found plenty of evidence in Mr Blair's speech of the "can do" capacity of this powerful Labour government. But it's not fanciful to say that the "want to, can do" instinct of many Labour delegates was never more powerfully manifest than in the response to Mr Blair's assertion: "deny opportunity, leave injustice unchecked, and we lay waste the genius of the nation."
In the days pre-Michael Howard it was always said that the height of a Tory Home Secretary's ambition was to emerge unscathed from the rigours of conference week, and the annual enforced get-together with the party's "hang them and flog them" brigade. And in a reversal of the roles, there is probably something of that edge, too, in the relationship between the Labour conference and the present Home Secretary. Many, on left and right, speak of Mr Jack Straw's ability to sound "just like Michael Howard" and get away with it - not least because he so obviously is not like Mr Howard.
Close observers have in fact come to much admire Mr Straw since his arrival at the Home Office. They describe him as friendly, accessible and level-headed. To this point he is without doubt one of the actual star performers of this government. He has delivered, and is delivering, on his legislative promises. And he has the added attraction of being, as one colleague puts it, "somewhat semi-detached from New Labour flummery."
If anything were to happen to Mr Blair, there is little doubt Jack Straw would be among the contenders for the succession. The true test of his anti-crime measures is still, of course, to come. And among those wedded to a traditional view of the social causes of crime, and society's responsibility for them, there is undoubted scepticism about Mr Straw's emphasis on zero tolerance, and rights accompanied by responsibilities.
So he will have been happy this week in the knowledge that he was appealing to that section of Labour's constituency (as well as far beyond it) when he told the Black Police Association in London it was no longer enough for forces "to pay lip service to the ethos of equal opportunities".
Henceforth, the Home Secretary announced, police forces would be set targets for the recruitment, retention and promotion of black and Asian officers. Signalling that he did not expect failure, and threatening tough action against any who might, Mr Straw told chief constables the recruitment of thousands more officers from Britain's ethnic minorities was necessary if their forces were properly to mirror the society they serve, and the communities whose support they seek.
The Home Secretary stopped short of setting deadlines for this transformation of the face of British policing, and declined to spell out the precise penalties that would result from failure to heed his exhortation, although the clear threat was that defaulting forces would find their budgets cut.
His initiative came against the backdrop of something approaching a catharsis among senior police officers triggered by the fall-out from the Stephen Lawrence case. The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester admitted last week that his force had "institutionalised racism."
Figures subsequently published showed that Greater Manchester police force had stopped and searched 45,020 people in 1996/1997 - representing 17 out of 1,000 of the white population, as against 73 out of 1,000 blacks and Asians.
The population covered by the Greater Manchester force includes 6 per cent who are either black, Asian or Chinese while only 2 per cent of its strength is drawn from the ethnic groups. In London, over a fifth of the population comes from ethnic groups while New Scotland Yard can boast only 3 per cent black or Asian officers. Mr Straw's proposals presuppose some 5,300 officers from ethnic backgrounds as opposed to the existing 862 in the Met.
Statistics don't necessarily tell the whole story, or reflect a uniform pattern across Britain: the big cities clearly represent the biggest challenge. But the figures do, nonetheless, convey the nature and something of the scale of Mr Straw's problem.
He has been applauded for making a good start in identifying it, and there is no doubt he wants to see it addressed. But the debate is just beginning as to whether he has found the solution. Many think setting targets and threatening penalties is unlikely to produce the guaranteed results that would flow from quotas and a policy of positive discrimination.
The Home Secretary knows this is the stuff of political minefields, and has apparently set his face against such a course. But if his targets fail, the argument is likely to grow - particularly if radical measures are proposed in respect of the other great policing problem facing this government, by the Patten Commission now sitting in Northern Ireland.