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On September 28 1975, staff at the Spaghetti House restaurant in Knightsbridge were confronted by a terrifying sight.
Three robbers had stormed into the restaurant, holding a sawn-off shotgun and two handguns demanding that week’s takings of £11,000 (£117,921 in today’s money.)
They barricaded staff in the basement and had a getaway driver at the ready.
But the plan was left in tatters after the alarm was raised by one of the managers who managed to escape their clutches.
More than 400 officers, including firearms teams, later surrounded the building. After holding the hostages for six days they were later released unharmed.
The armed trio were affiliated with Black action groups, later claiming the raid was a political act. But this explanation was dismissed by detectives who treated it as a robbery gone wrong. A court later heard claims that the robbery was launched to raise funds to pay off a gambling debt.
While the restaurant was once known as one of London’s go-to Italian restaurants, it closed in 2015 after the landlord decided to redevelop the block into luxury shops.
However, some locals remember how one of the most affluent neighbourhoods on the planet was transformed into a no-go zone as police with guns, shields and chattering radios surrounded the restaurant on that fateful day.
Faisal, an Egyptian pensioner who lived near the Spaghetti House and still resides in the area just 100 metres from Harrods, told Metro he was told by police to leave his flat in the aftermath of the raid.
He told Metro: ‘It was chaos. There were lots of police sirens and then they all parked up outside the spaghetti house. I used to eat there it was a great place and very popular.
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‘A police officer told me to leave my flat as there was an “armed incident”. It was only the next day when I got my paper that I realised what had happened in Knightsbridge of all places.
‘Because I was not directly opposite the restaurant and in the firing line I suppose, they let me return to my flat. All of the locals watched what was going on from behind the police lines though. It was like watching a crime film, it was very surreal.’
He joked: ‘Harrods remained open but I had to go the long way round, which was inconvenient.’
A concierge at a local flat block nearby told Metro: ‘I wasn’t around when the siege happened but my dad was working round the corner at the time.
‘He told us kids what had happened. We were very shocked and he said he and his workmates had been evacuated.
‘It was a big deal at the time. When the Spaghetti House closed I suppose the memories went with it.’
While nearby residents remember the siege as a terrifying attack, for the Met Police it marked the first time they used groundbreaking fibre optic technology to monitor the scene.
Two tiny cameras were placed in the building to film the gunmen, with one being pushed through a vent, while an audio device captured their conversations as it unfolded.
As well as Met hostage negotiators, a psychologist was brought in to analyse them and their threat level.
Through the covert operation, police established the gang leader as Franklin Davies, and began to work up a profile of him.
Davies told officers during negotiations that he was a member of Black Liberation – an organisation modelled on the Black Panthers in the US.
He demanded the release of two black prisoners, even though they had already been freed.
He also requested a visit to the scene from the Home Secretary and an aircraft to facilitate the group’s escape to the West Indies.
The only concession the police allowed was a demand for a radio so the robbers could listen to the way the siege was being reported.
Although police initially categorised the robbery as a terrorist act, the Met Commissioner at the time Sir Robert Mark later dismissed any political motivations.
He 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 to represent it as a political act were received with the derision they clearly deserved.’
On October 3, the group gave up and released all the remaining hostages after previously letting two go.
A shot rang out in the building and it emerged that Davies had turned a gun on himself but he was not fatally wounded. He later stood trial alongside his two accomplices.
Davies was sentenced to 22 years while the others – Wesley Dick and Anthony Munroe – were jailed for 18 and 17 years respectively.
Today, the restaurant is an empty space within one of London’s prestigious postcodes, quietly sitting unused and surrounded by shops and whizzing traffic.
While motorists and shoppers passing by might be unaware of the location’s significance, its local residents and workers nearby keep the venue’s history alive.
‘I remember thinking that it was something that we only though happened in America with the armed cops on the rooftops,’ the concierge added.
‘No one really remembers it here, but it’s part of London’s history.’
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