A Spaghetti House hostage crisis grips the nation
The press and police descend on a London restaurant “like a besieging army” after an armed robbery goes wrong
Lateon 28 September 1975, the nine staff members at the Spaghetti House restaurant in Knightsbridge were counting up the week’s takings. The total came to around £13,000 – not a bad haul, by the standards of the time. It was then that the gunmen struck.
Three armed men burst into the restaurant, jabbing guns into the faces of the terrified restaurant employees. As the invaders led their captives down towards the basement, one staff member managed to get away. But the others – all Italians – were shoved into a tiny storeroom, crammed with tins of food. There, for the next five days, most of them remained – hostages.
At first, the police and the press assumed that the raid must be some sort of political stunt. The gunmen – a Nigerian student and two West Indian friends – claimed to be representing the Black Liberation Army, and demanded to be flown out of the country to Jamaica. In reality, however, it was simply an ordinary armed robbery, which had gone dangerously wrong.
For the next five days, the Spaghetti House was the centre of national press attention, with the police camped outside like a besieging army. Careful not to do anything that would inflame the kidnappers, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Robert Mark, allowed them a radio, some coffee and cigarettes in return for two hostages. His approach paid off: at last, on 3 October, the kidnappers cracked.
“The hostages are coming out,” their leader radioed the police just before four that morning, as the exhausted captives staggered out of the building. Needless to say, the would-be robbers were all sentenced to long stretches in prison.