Kevin Maxwell served as a detective in both the Greater Manchester and London’s Metropolitan Police forces. He was a dream candidate – he had a long-held desire to serve his community, a strong moral compass and a clear aptitude for both the strategic and practical aspects of policing. As a gay black man from a working-class family, he could easily have been a poster boy for the force’s stated commitment to equal opportunities. Joining just after the 9/11 attacks, he entered policing determined to keep communities safe in the face of a changing world. But instead he came up against entrenched prejudice, open racism and homophobia. For more than ten years, he strove against the odds, until he took the force to an employment tribunal – with devastating results.

Maxwell offers a fascinating insider perspective on day-to-day life in the force, painting a sobering portrait of an institution that has not yet learned the lessons of the past and whose prejudice is informing the cases it chooses to investigate and the way it investigates them. And he asks the important question: what needs to change?

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Festival of Ideas: Kevin Maxwell, Forced Out: A Detective’s Story of Prejudice and Resilience