A recent speech by David Lammy, MP for Tottenham in London - my home 10 years ago - finally alludes to an elephant in the room, or more accurately, in British inner cities.

The black Labour minister for higher education was addressing the Runnymede Trust (a race equality think tank) about single parent families.

"In particular, I worry at figures showing 59 per cent of black Caribbean and 44 per cent of black African children grow up in single parent households," said Lammy.

The MP went on to list some of the problems associated with fatherless families - the extra financial and emotional burden on mothers, the lack of a positive male influence and the subsequent lure of gang culture for young boys, among others.

As someone who lived and worked in some of London’s deprived boroughs - Tottenham, Walthamstow, Leyton, Hoxton and Bethnal Green - for long periods, Lammy’s comments are a statement of the blindingly obvious. I saw legions of mixed race children with white mothers, particularly around council estates. I seldom saw a father at any hour of the day or night.

And Lammy’s speech fails to address another key question - how many children are the "absent" fathers siring? Do we have official figures for that? If most of the children of black fathers are left to grow up on their own then this can only represent a ticking time bomb of future criminality. Or has the bomb already exploded? Judging by the state of some of our inner cities, I’d say we are seeing a succession of bombs on a daily basis.

Nevertheless, that an establishment figure is willing to put his head above the parapet on this issue is a real breakthrough. Yet for all Lammy’s courage - and I suspect he’s a fine man - the message is 30 years too late. What were his "predecessors" shooting off about - the likes of the late Bernie Grant, Paul Boateng and Diane Abbott? Answer, endlessly lambasting the white "establishment" for its alleged racism and earning their socialist stripes among the rank and file in the process.

Many on the far left were guilty of shameful manipulation; others were cowards for not protesting. (As a significant aside, Abbott ended up sending her son to the independent City of London school - so she was happy to associate with the hated "white establishment" when it suited her interests).

The MPs in question knew that the so-called establishment was not the problem; the behaviour of some of their own constituency was. Yet they would not say it, preferring to bash Thatcher and Labour moderates instead. It served their interests to keep their malleable subjects disaffected and angry.

Their ludicrous fake outrage, their contention that somehow all black underachievement - indeed any failing - stemmed from institutionalised racism or the legacy of imperialism, went unchallenged.

It was nonsense, of course, but it was easier than addressing real problems. They didn’t want their people to develop aspirations above their station and escape from poverty. Then - God forbid - they may even vote for someone else; in effect it was a form of psychological gerrymandering.

Fact is, in 2010, if a white person had uttered Lammy’s comment, even a left-leaning one with a track record of promoting friendly race relations, their careers could be ruined overnight. As for conservative figures - most famously, Enoch Powell, but also others like headmaster Ray Honeyford and former Conservative MP John Townend - a speech on this subject signed their own death warrants. You can’t help but conclude, therefore, that the likes of Powell and Honeyford and Townend were burnt on the stake of political correctness purely because they were the wrong colour. Now, is that racism?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/15/black-boys-too-feminised-fathers