Spaghetti House siege

The Spaghetti House siege began on the late evening of 28 September 1975, at the Spaghetti House restaurant in Knightsbridge, London. Franklin Davies, a Nigerian student, led two other gunmen, Anthony Munroe and Wesley Dick, in an attempted armed robbery of the Spaghetti House, where managers of the chain had assembled to pay in the week's takings of approximately £13,000. When the armed robbery did not go to plan, nine Italian staff members were taken hostage, and moved into the basement. Another staff member escaped and raised the alarm, leading to a siege of six days.

Events of the siege

The Metropolitan Police surrounded the restaurant and cordoned off the area. The gunmen, claiming to represent the Black Liberation Army, a Black Panther splinter group, demanded safe passage and an aircraft out of the country to Jamaica. Due to this being a sensitive issue, Sir Robert Mark, the then Commissioner, consulted with the Home Office and refused.

According to Manwaring-White (1983), this was an early use of fibre optic technology as a live surveillance technique.[1]

Psychiatrist Dr Peter Scott gave advice about the mental state of the criminals. Radio reporters demoralised the robbers with the insistence their demands would never be met, and the Daily Mail suppressed a scoop at the commissioner's request, concerning the police arrest of a believed confederate of Davies. The police also ensured Davies received a false message that his alleged confederate was selling information to the newspapers.

The siege lasted for six days. The demoralised robbers and their captives emerged unharmed. The perpetrators, 28-year-old Nigerian student and ringleader Franklin Davies, 24-year-old West Indian man Wesley Dick (later known as Shujaa Moshesh ) and 22-year-old West Indian man Anthony Gordon Munroe were sentenced to 22, 18 and 17 years in prison respectively.[2]

Politics of the siege

Whilst it was claimed in the trial that the Black Liberation Army did not exist in the UK and that the three were simply criminals seeking personal gain[3], the defense committee for the Spaghetti House Three provided political profiles for each of the defendants. [4] Franklin Davies, they asserted had, tried to enlist in querilla armies on the continent of Africa, while Anthony Munroe had hosted a Black supplementary school in the front room of his home. But the most politically active was Wesley Dick was a regular attendee at meetings of the Black Panthers, the Fasimbas, the Black Liberation Front (BLF), and the Black Unity and Freedom Party. and regularly visited the offices of the Institute of Race Relations to volunteer and access their library.[4]

References

  1. ↑ Manwaring-White, Sarah (1983) The Policing Revolution. Police technology, democracy and liberty in Britain Brighton: Harvester Press
  2. ↑ "1975: London's Spaghetti House siege ends". BBC ON THIS DAY. BBC. Retrieved 11 April 2015.
  3. ↑ Tupman, Willim (1998). Mackenzie, Ian, ed. "Violent Business?: Networking, Terrorism And Organised Crime". Law, Power, and Justice in England and Wales. Praeger.
  4. 1 2 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306396811414319

Coordinates: 51°30′08″N 0°09′28″W / 51.50219°N 0.15777°W / 51.50219; -0.15777

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