The disturbances over three days in south London, between mainly black youths and mainly white Met officers, led to hundreds of arrests, widespread destruction and shocked the country into one of its periodic bursts of reflection on race. The laws were blamed for igniting the Brixton uprising - or riots - of April 1981. The laws - based on 19th-century statutes criminalising the homeless - let officers arrest people whom they suspected merely of intending to commit an offence.Īlthough the young Logan planned routes to and from school to avoid places with a regular police presence, his autobiography, Closing Ranks, describes how he was frequently stopped by what he and his friends called “the Thought Police” - officers who accused them of planning to commit crimes. There were a lot of assumptions made, a lot around background.”įor many black men of Logan’s generation, the stereotyping and assumptions took their most pernicious form in the so-called “Sus” (from “suspected person”) laws.

“The Met has always had an issue about race, from the time when people of the Commonwealth settled back here after the second world war,” Logan tells me. So why, I ask, has the Met so consistently had poor relations with black Londoners? After agreeing that neither of us handles lunchtime alcohol well, we order. When I arrive, Logan is already at our table, wearing a stylish patterned shirt and drinking jasmine tea. “The first 10 years in the Met, I was thinking, ‘Why would I leave a positive environment of science research . . . at the most cutting-edge hospital . . . then join a macho . . . militaristic, testosterone-driven culture that really doesn’t understand difference?’ ” he says. He sounds astonished that he stuck it out. It documents how Logan faced regular incidents of racist name-calling, graffiti on his locker and injuries caused when colleagues let him face dangerous situations alone. The film - in which John Boyega plays Logan - shows how in May 1983 Logan gave up a blossoming career in medical science at London’s Royal Free Hospital to join the Met.

Logan’s life story became widely known in late 2020, when his autobiography formed the basis for Red, White and Blue, one of Steve McQueen’s acclaimed Small Axe series of films about the lives of British black people. “She seems to be protecting the organisation against any sort of reform or change because she doesn’t think it needs any reform or change. “I think she’s got misplaced loyalties,” he says.

Closing Ranks by Dr Leroy Logan