The inspiration behind Steve McQueen’s Small Axe: Red, White and Blue

THE TIMES- 25th November 2020

When Leroy Logan arrived at Buckingham Palace to be awarded an MBE by the Queen for services to policing, his father said something in his thick Jamaican accent that took him completely by surprise. “I suppose you did the right thing joining the police,” he told his son.

Finally, one of Britain’s most high-profile black police officers had been given the approval he had been looking for since he horrified his father by giving up a promising career as a scientist to join the Metropolitan Police in the 1980s. He did so even though — while he was in the process of joining — his father, a lorry driver, was so badly beaten by two police officers that his son didn’t recognise him.