Spaghetti House siege
An attempted robbery of the Spaghetti House restaurant in Knightsbridge, London, went wrong and the police were quickly on the scene.
The police used fibre optic camera technology for live surveillance, and monitored the actions and conversations of the gunmen from the audio and visual output.
The feed was watched by a forensic psychiatrist who advised police on the state of the men's minds, and how to best manage the ongoing negotiations.
Post-Second World War Britain had a shortage of labour, which led to official policies to attract workers from the British Empire and Commonwealth countries.
[4] The ringleader of the attempted robbery of a branch of the Spaghetti House restaurant was Franklin Davies, a 28-year-old Nigerian student who had previously served time in prison for armed robbery; he was accompanied by two men, Wesley Dick (later known as Shujaa Moshesh), a 24-year-old West Indian, and Anthony "Bonsu" Munroe, a 22-year-old Guyanese.
[8] Sivanandan and the historian Rob Waters identify that the three men were attempting to obtain money to "finance black supplementary schools and support African liberation struggles".
The managers deposited their week's takings at the Knightsbridge restaurant, before it was paid into a night safe at a nearby bank.
[11] At approximately 1:30 am on Sunday 28 September 1975 Davies, Moshesh and Munroe entered the Knightsbridge branch of the Spaghetti House.
[11][19][20] In the initial conversations the hostage-takers provided the police with the names of the hostages they held and Davies's identity and criminal record was established.
He also wanted the Home Secretary to visit the siege, an aircraft made available to fly to the West Indies and a radio for them to listen to the news broadcasts of the situation.
[12][25][26] Initially the police considered that the siege may have been a terrorist incident,[21][g] but were subsequently dismissive of any political motivation, and insisted that it was only ever a criminal action.
[27][28] Sir Robert Mark—the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at the time of the siege—later wrote: From the outset it was rightly assumed that this was a simple armed robbery that had gone wrong and any attempts by Davies, the Nigerian, to represent it as a political act were received with the derision they clearly deserved.
It was essentially the words of Angela Davis, George Jackson, Bobby Seale and Malcolm X that honed the resistance: 'Seize the time', 'Off the pigs', 'Fuck the man' were the themes they transposed to Britain.
[19] On the second day another hostage was released after he fell ill.[25] During the course of the siege Mario Manca, the Italian consul general, attempted to liaise with the men, acting as a go-between.
[30] Lord Pitt, the former chairman of the Greater London Council who was West Indian-born, also attempted to negotiate with the men, but had limited success.
[11] Peter Scott, a forensic psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital, gave advice about the mental state of the criminals throughout the siege.
[31] He told the police that the longer the siege went on, the more an emotional transference would take place, in which the gunmen would be less likely to kill the hostages.
[38] In his pocket police found a note he had written to his brother just before the robbery: Today I set out on a mission for the people.
The judge, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, ordered that the three men be taken back to their cells and that a plea of not guilty be entered on their behalf.
[48] In early December 1975 members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) were cornered in a flat on Balcombe Street, London, leading to a six-day siege by police.
