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Chapter 26. Solidarity with the Revolution in Grenada, 1979–83
Overthrow of the Gary dictatorship
On 13 March 1979, the dictatorial and corrupt regime of Prime Minister Eric M. Gary in Grenada was
overthrown in a one-day popular revolution led by the New Jewel Movement (NJM). The revolution was
nearly bloodless—three deaths, one of which was a policeman who accidentally shot himself. During the
day, three cruise ships docked in the harbor of the capital St. George’s and the tourists went about their
customary sightseeing and shopping oblivious to the trucks loaded with armed revolutionaries flying
about the city.
Early in 1980, I received a call from the national CPUSA office asking if I could attend the founding
meeting of the U.S. Grenada Friendship Society, the organization being founded as a solidarity
organization in support of the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG). At the meeting, I acquired the
function of Vice President for Material and Technical Assistance. The other officers were Acie Byrd,
President, Margaret Finch, Vice President, Education; Carlota Scott, Vice President, Tourism; Josephine
Butler, Vice President Organization and Membership; and James Drew, Treasurer. In 1981, I asked the
Caribbean writer Jan Carew, then a professor at Northwestern University, who also had a home in
Grenada, to join me in founding a nonprofit organization, which we named Foundation for Educational
and Scientific Cooperation with Grenada. He served as president, and I served as secretary-treasurer. I
continued this association with Grenada until the invasion of Grenada by the United States in October
1983.
In my article entitled “Class Forces in Revolutionary Democratic States: The Example of Grenada”
(in Ideology and Independence of the Americas, edited by April Knutson, Marxist Educational
Publications, 1989, 61–81), I outlined the background of the 1979 revolution, the ideology of the NJM,
and the political and economic policies of the PRL until its implosion in October 1983 provided the
pretext for the U.S. invasion of Grenada that month. I will incorporate some of the material from this
article to provide background for my activities of solidarity with the PRG.
The revolutionary uprising of 1979 was successful because all classes and strata of the Grenadian
population of 105,000, except those most directly serving the ruthless dictatorship of Eric M. Gairy,
supported it to one degree or another. Gairy had done nothing to disturb the neocolonial status of
Grenada, which continued to supply the metropolitan countries with cocoa, bananas, and nutmeg, while
he stifled a trade-union movement that was trying to put an end to the low wages, His excesses with the
domestic population were of no concern to imperialism as long as its interests were not disturbed.
At the time of the revolution, poverty on the island was nearly universal. Unemployment ran some 50
percent. Seventy-five percent of the workforce was unemployed or underemployed. The natural wealth of
the country and the labor of its people had been brutally exploited for centuries by the colonial powers.
The wealth of the country was exported primarily through the underpayment of agricultural labor and
excessive profits on what are known as colonial products, the export of which provided some ninety-four
percent of its visible export earnings. In his speech in 1982 on the third anniversary of the revolution,
Maurice Bishop (1944–83), gave the following example. A nutmeg worker cracks 150 pounds of nutmeg
a day, earning US$ 2.60. The nutmeg from this day's work, after further processing and packaging in
London, is sold for US$ 900. Despite its bountiful tropical forests and fertile lands, Grenada imported
almost all the food available for purchase including its staple (in a country surrounded by water),
Canadian salt cod, Seventy percent of the calories in the daily diet was obtained from imported foods.
Forty percent of the first-class hotel beds on Grenada was owned by Holiday Inn of Canada--construction
of which began in 1970 with ten years of tax-free rights. In 1981, after the expiration of these rights, the
hotel mysteriously caught fire and Holiday Inn demanded another ten years of pioneering rights as a
condition for reopening.
In Grenada itself, however, the hatred of the Gairy regime extended into all classes and strata. The
landowners were under continual fear of expropriation if they antagonized the idiosyncratic tyrant; the
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national bourgeoisie faced various forms of extortion and were enraged by his use of the state apparatus
for personal enrichment. The workers found it impossible to keep Gairy’s corrupt hands out of legitimate
trade-union activities, while he suppressed activities of unions he could not corrupt. Civil servants could
not make any decisions without first running them by Gairy, who would ensure that there was some
personal benefit that he would derive from them. The religious leaders were not happy with his appeal to
superstition and cult practices, which he used to build a power base among the most culturally backward
parts of the population. The intelligentsia was ashamed of the reputation Grenada was acquiring
internationally with his lecturing the United Nations about the urgency of defense against UFO’s. Gairy
retaliated by cutting off scholarships for Grenadians at the University of the West Indies. Even the army
and the police had no love for Gairy, so that when the NJM military group attacked the army barracks in
the early hours of 13 March 1979, not a shot was fired by the soldiers, who simply ran off into the hills.
The party that led the revolution, the New Jewel Movement (NJM), arose from the merger in 1973 of
two organizations: the Movement for the Assemblies of the Peoples (MAP) and the Joint Effort for
Welfare, Education and Liberation (JEWEL) as an anti-imperialist, democratic reform movement
deriving its organizational leadership from petty-bourgeois intellectuals. The leader of the NJM, and
subsequently Prime Minister of the People’s Revolutionary Government, Maurice Bishop, for example,
was an attorney who came out of the lay Catholic movement. He and fellow attorney Kenrick Radix were
the principal founders of JEWEL. In its Manifesto of 1973, prepared shortly after its formation, the New
Jewel Movement declared that its main concerns were raising the standard of housing, clothing,
education, health, food, and recreation of all the people. It took on a Marxist orientation in 1974 and
gradually moved toward transforming it into a Marxist-Leninist Party. As the struggle against the corrupt
neocolonialist regime of Gairy gained support in various sectors of the population, Gairy increasingly
employed brutal methods to retain power. The chief target of this brutality was leaders of the NJM.
Murder and beatings by his gang of thugs, known as the Mongoose gang, became particularly intensive
after it was clear that the NJM would win an open election. He also confiscated the property of his
wealthier opponents, so that by the time of the 1979 revolution, some forty percent of large farms were in
the hands of Gairy’s corrupt government.
With the electoral path barred, and the multiclass anti-Gairy movement at its height, the NJM
decision to launch the uprising was taken after anti-Gairy elements in the police leaked information to the
NJM that Gairy had ordered the assassination of eight leaders of the NJM while he was out of the country
on one of his frequent foreign junkets. At 4 a.m. on 13 October 1979 an armed attachment of men
attacked the army barracks. After a half-hour resistance, with no casualties on either side, the 300 troops
in the barracks fled into the hills. According to one account, the armed attachment consisted of only
twenty-four men. U:\(http:\www.thegrenadarevolutiononline.com\revotruth.html)Another armed group
seized the radio station an hour later and announced the revolution at 6 a.m., demanding that all police
stations surrender by hoisting a white flag. At 9:48 a.m. Maurice Bishop, who was to become the Prime
Minister of the People’s Revolutionary Government, announced on the radio that most of the police
stations had surrendered. The few police stations that resisted finally surrendered by early afternoon after
being surrounded by masses of women a few armed revolutionaries demanding their surrender
A month later, in a speech to the nation on 13 April, Maurice Bishop reported that the U.S.
ambassador threatened to disrupt Grenada’s tourist industry if it earned the displeasure of the United
States by displaying any tendency to develop any relations with Cuba. In reply to this threat, Bishop told
the Grenadian people that they were in nobody’s back yard. Immediately after that, the U.S. State
Department began its effort to destabilize Grenada, by disseminating warnings about the danger of tourist
travel to Grenada.
First visit to Grenada
In March 1980, coinciding with the first anniversary of the Grenadian Revolution, I made my first trip
to Grenada to learn how the Friendship organization could contribute material and technical aid. The
5,000-foot runway at Pearls International Airport in Grenada was too short for jet passenger planes.
Moreover, the airport had no night-landing facilities. From Minneapolis, I had to fly to Barbados,
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overnight there, and board a small propeller-driven plane to Grenada. For this reason the People’s
Revolutionary Government contracted with the Cuban government for the building of a new airport with
a runway of 9,000 feet so that could handle the large jet aircraft. The Cubans set up a construction base
and brought in some 500 construction workers and the necessary heavy machinery. This gave rise to an
outcry from the Reagan administration that the Cubans were building a military airfield for the Soviet
Union in Grenada.
The trip from Pearls to the capital St. George’s was in mountainous terrain. The swerving of the
passenger van around the curves and bouncing over the holes in the road (or as the Grenadians said the
“road in them holes”) made me so nauseous that the van had to stop to let me out to throw up at the
roadside. The airport that was being built by the Cubans closer to the St. George’s and on flat land
bordering on the sea at Point Salines.
I stayed at a motel, owned by Royston Hopkin, one of the leading representatives of the national
bourgeoisie. The Hopkin family owned several hotels and a rental car service from which I always rented
a car during my visits to Grenada. Although not a supporter of socialism, Hopkin supported the measures
taken by revolutionary government and was frequently consulted by it. I remember that during a visit to
Grenada late in 1981, Hopkin expressed to me his anger at the demand of Holiday Inn for an additional
ten years of tax-free rights as a condition for repairing the damage from the mysterious fire: “Holiday Inn
is holding a revolver against the head of our government,” he said, “and our government will not stand for
it.” The People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) nationalized only the hotels that had been owned by
Gairy. In 1983 it purchased the Holiday Inn hotel building from its Canadian owners. In order increase
Grenada’s bargaining power in international trade, the PRG created a Marketing and National Import
Board that would negotiate prices of Grenada’s principal exports—mainly nutmeg, cocoa, and bananas—
with the foreign buyers. Similarly, the Marketing and National Import Board would pool the orders for
supplies need by Grenadian-owned businesses and negotiate lower prices for the imports.
On 13 March 1980, I sat in the stands for the celebration of the first anniversary of the revolution. A
few seats away were two African American members of the U.S. Congress, whose names I do not recall
with any certainty. Two slogans that I remember from that even were “Education Is for We” (usual
Grenadian syntax) and Long Live the Revo!” The first was for a mass literacy campaign and the second,
of course, was a reference to the Revolution. Although the British had introduced compulsory education,
the low skill level of available jobs and the cost of reading material led to secondary illiteracy. With
unemployment now decreasing and the beginnings of modernization of the economy, emphasis was being
put on education. A secondary slogan was, “If You Don’t Know, Learn; If You Do Know, Teach!” The
official ceremonies on the diplomatic level, to which I had not been invited, lasted until midnight. One of
the trade-union leaders, whom I had met during the day, invited me to a party in his home in the
mountains on the outskirts of Georgetown. He told me it would begin around 2 a.m. Although I had
rented a jeep from the Hopkin car rental service, I had no map detailed enough that would enable me to
find his home. “How can I find it,” I asked. “Pick up a hitchhiker,” was his reply. To the surprise he saw
on my face, he said, “It’s perfectly safe. This is not New York.” And, as I was to learn, Grenada was one
of the safest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Pick up a hitchhiker I did, and the party was great.
Driving back to my motel at 4 a.m., I stopped to ask two men walking along the road if they wished a
ride. They joined me in the jeep. It turned out that one was part of a team of Cuban fishermen that were
sent to train Grenadians to work on several fishing trawlers that Cuba gave as a gift to Grenada. The other
was a Grenadian about eighteen years old who was his pupil. The Cuban seemed to know no English and
the Grenadian no Spanish, but the managed to get along with each other. Cuba eventually gave Grenada
eleven trawlers, three of which were eventually wrecked or lost by fire by the time of the U.S. invasion.
Providingmaterialaid:typewritersandtypewriterpartsfortheGrenadianschool
system
At the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Social Affairs, I learned of the desperate need for
typewriters by the pub lic school system. Apart from the shortage of typewriters, the ministry needed
help in obtaining parts for repair of the existing machines. During the visit, I drew up a list of parts that
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were needed. Although numerous in quantity, most were screws and nuts that cost only a few pennies
each. After my return, I was able to acquire the needed materials and have them delivered to Grenada.
Nationally, we sent out the call for anyone traveling to Grenada to bring a typewriter with them for the
Ministry of Education, Youth, and Social Affairs. I never made another trip to Grenada without bringing
one or two typewriters as baggage.
Another task I acquired was to verify that the labels on cans of tropical juices being produced by a
new state-owned firm satisfied the requirements of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration so that the
juice could be exported to the United States. I immediately noticed that the labels mistakenly treated fluid
ounces as a weight measurement and gave its metric equivalent in grams instead of cubic centimeters. I
took labels back with me to check them against the U.S. requirements and then send the corrected labels
back to Grenada.
In June, accompanied by Doris I returned to Grenada on crutches, with one leg in a cast after having
broken it in the accident at the university the day before. My trousers covered the cast, but the big canvas
shoe that was needed protruded out from it
The flight to Barbados provided some excitement. The landing gear of the British West Indian Airline
plane had not extended properly for the landing in Barbados. As the pilot attempted to correct the
problem, he had to make several passes close to the airport control tower so they could look at the
position of the landing gear and report to him what they saw. The result was inconclusive. Nevertheless,
the passengers remained calm, with no visible signs of anxiety. The copilot eventually came out of
cockpit, rolled back a piece of the aisle carpeting, removed a piece of the flooring, and opened a hatch on
the underside of the plane so he could inspect some part of the landing gear. He finally signaled that the
landing gear was in place and we landed without incident.
“Looking for the man with the big foot?”
During this visit to Grenada, I had a luncheon appointment with Minister of Health Norris Bain, one
of the members of the PRG from national bourgeoisie (1934–1983), in a downtown restaurant in St.
George’s. I was to meet him on Wednesday, 18 June 1980, at 1 p.m. When Doris and I arrived at the
restaurant, we arranged that she would go window shopping while I met with the minister and then come
back to the restaurant at 2 p.m. I sat at table in the restaurant while waiting for the minister. At 1:30 p.m.,
a messenger came to inform me that the minister was unable to keep the appointment and a new one was
made for Friday. Rather than wait for Doris to return at 2 p.m., I went out into the street to see if I could
spot her. Doris returned to the restaurant before I did, and not finding me there, went into the street to see
if she could find me. As she stood on a street corner looking for me in all directions, a Grenadian man
delicately not wanting to make the point that a white person would stand out among a population that is
almost entirely black, said to her, “Looking for the man with the big foot?”
At my meeting with the Minister of Health on Friday, he gave me a list of medical equipment that
Grenada badly needed.
From my observations and conversations during this visit, it became clear that the NJM avoided
publicizing what it regarded as its Marxist-Leninist character. The goal of constructing a socialist society
was also not mentioned in its statements or publications, although in one case, I found the word socialism
mentioned in a document by Bernard Coard, the Minister of Finance. Cocard had long been associated
with a more leftist position than the other members of the NJM leadership. Without indicating socialism
as a goal, the PRG was pursuing a strategy of building up a state sector in the economy. It contracted with
a Bulgarian firm for the construction of a state-owned canning factory. It was undertaking the
reconstruction of its state-owned telephone system with the aid of the German Democratic Republic. At
the same time, it continued to maintain support by the national bourgeoisie by protecting their interests
from the pressures from the encroachments of international capital. A huge network of day-care centers
was established to ease the particularly difficult situation faced by women. With an unemployment of
over 50 percent at the time of the revolution, and the widespread lack of family structures with both
parents in one household—a heritage from the times of slavery—a large proportion of the women had the
burden of being the sole supporters of themselves and the children. Like other parts of the British
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Caribbean, most of the children were born to single mothers. The network of day-care centers allowed the
PRG to employ women on public works projects such as the clearing of the gutter channels that ran along
the roads. These channels rapidly filled with runoff dirt during the frequent heavy rains.
Special attention to the needs of Grenadian women
During this visit, in I met with Vincent Noel (1947–1983), president of the Bank and General
Workers Union at a Marxist bookstore operated by his union. He explained how the NJM, although
maintaining a low profile about its Marxist orientation, was trying to bring a Marxist ideology to its union
members. He asked if we could provide 200 copies each of two Soviet books, both of which had been
published in English: Political Economy of Capitalism and Political Economy of Socialism. I replied that
we did not have funds for such a project, but I would send twenty copies of each, and that he should
request help from the Cubans for obtaining more copies from the Soviet Union.
Noel gave me the new issue of Worker’s Voice¸ a newspaper that he edited. The issue, vol. 3, no. 1,
dated 17 June 1980, and printed on several A4 sized sheets, had most of its front page devoted to sexual
harassment of women bank employees by a manager or supervisor at Barclays Bank. The article
headlined “Oh No! Mr. Vidal,” and written in Grenadian dialect. it reads:
But Vidal you crazy? How you could expect to just snatch and grab and try to scramble the sisters in
Barclays. Now they fraid to go in the vault and lunch room when you around. All the female workers fraid to
work overtime if you staying behind.
Is true some of the female workers curse you and “ting” but they still fraid you Vidal you mad you try to
scramble the man wife. They fraid to take lift home with you after work.
Days for them things done Vidal, boy. You ent hear what the PRG say bout that? Is the same thing you
used to do when you been here before, but that was when Gairy was around. You get worse now.
Look Vidal, is a lucky thing they take your work permit, or else dem Barclays sisters would hang you by
you ….
Where Barclays does get dem kind-a-people to dump on we? They had a white racist like Davies-Evans
and now this maniac. Remember how Barclays and Gairy join together to victimize, terrorise, and jail
workers because they join Bank and General Workers Union?
Every worker must know something about Barclays Bank. The Barclay family first started to make
plenty money kidnapping Africans, making them slaves in the Caribbean and America. Then Barclays
opened a bank to export profits from poor countries back to England.
Now they are lending money to criminal racist and oppressive government of South Africa. Now that we
know a little about Barclays you understand how they behaving so?
HEAVY HEAVY MANNERS FOR SEX-PLOITERS
OUT WITH WORKERS’ VICTIMIZATION!
Doris and I learned that a Jamaican women’s theater group was performing in a village in the
countryside (the longest straight-line distance in Grenada is about 20 miles. We rented a jeep and with the
aid of a hitchhiker who still had five miles walking along the road to attend the performance, we were
able to find the village tucked away in the mountains. The play was about a fire in a women’s retirement
home that resulted from the negligence of its owners. It was performed in Jamaican dialect, which was
not intelligible to Grenadians, so a description of the action was given from the stage in the community
center, which was also the day-care center. For many of the Grenadians, this was the first play that they
had ever seen.
In late 1981, during another trip to Grenada, I had to drive to Pearls Airport to meet the plane of
another member of the U.S.-Grenada Friendship Society who was coming to Grenada. On the way to the
airport I picked up an elderly hitchhiker who was going to his village near the airport. When we arrived at
his village, he urged me to look at the new community center that had just opened in his village. He was
so proud of it, that I had to see it. It turned out to be a day-care center with spaces that that could serve as
a community center in the evening.
HEAVY HEAVY MANNERS FOR SEX-PLOITERS
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Proposal for two-week summer workshop for high-school science teachers
On another day, I was traveling in the countryside and stopped at a village square around noon to
look at the scenery and take some photos of it. Some five late-teenage boys, concerned about protecting
the “revo” looked at me suspiciously. I ensured them that I was a supporter of the revolution and told
them of my role in the U.S.-Grenada Friendship Society. I asked them if they were on a break from
school. They replied that they were done with school. I then asked them how come they were not
working. They said that there were no jobs. I asked them why they did not form a small cooperative to
plant crops in the estates that were not being tilled. At that time, the PRG was urging unemployed youths
to form small cooperatives of four or five people to plant crops in such estates, with the assurance that the
government will deal with the owners of the estates that were not being put to agricultural use. The youths
replied that that kind of work was not for them. I asked them what kind of work they wanted. “Hightech,” was their reply.
It is not surprising that that in a society that originated under conditions of slavery, agricultural work
would be considered demeaning. During my return back to St. George’s, I wondered how Grenada could
deal with the attitude against agricultural labor displayed by these teenagers. The next day I went to the
Ministry of Education, Youth, and Social Affairs and proposed that I would organize a two-week summer
workshop for high-school science teachers that would present some ideas on how to add a high-tech
component to agriculture by coupling physics and genetics to agriculture. I could not get an immediate
decision on a go-ahead, but it did come though upon my return.
I had heard about a progressive professor civil engineering at Princeton, Steve Slaby (1903–1990),
who had developed a solar furnace technology for agricultural use in developing countries. I contacted
him about my proposal and he immediately expressed interest in participating. He, in turn, suggested the
name of a geneticist John M. Matuszak, an adjunct professor in the Extension Service of the College of
the Virgin Islands.(In 2012, he was Division Chief for Sustainable Development and Multilateral Affairs
at the U.S. Department of State).
We made plans to conduct the two-week school for Granadian high-school science teachers in the
summer of 1982. I would lecture on the physics needed for solar and wind power, and the chemistry
needed for genetics. Steve would then link my lectures to the operation of the solar and wind power
devices that he would teach the students to construct. The geneticist would then connect genetics to the
tropical crops and animal husbandry in Grenada.
In March 1982, I drafted the greetings from the U.S. Friendship Society to the “Revolutionary People
and Government of Free Grenada” that was sent on the occasion of the third anniversary of the revolution.
It was sent under Acie Byrd’s and my signatures. We pledged, among other things, to “work to ensure
that that policies of domination and aggression that are bringing our own country to economic, social, and
moral ruin are replaced by policies of friendship and cooperation of the progressive changes occurring in
Grenada and the Caribbean.” We promised to “bring to the people of the United States the glorious record
of economic and cultural achievements of the People’s Revolutionary Government that has been winning
the admiration of people in the Caribbean.” We also pledged “to use whatever means available to us to
provide technical and material support to the people of Grenada and their economic and social
institutions.”
At meeting of the Caribbean Studies Association in Havana, doubtful claim by Minister
of Culture about no need for affirmative action program for Afro-Cubans
Some weeks before my planned departure for the Grenada summer school, Jan Carew, then president
of the Caribbean Studies Association, asked me to attend the annual meeting of the association which was
to take place in Havana, 12–16 July 1982 immediately prior to the summer school. Carew wanted to have
me there to support him in the event ideological disputes developed during the meeting. It turned out that
I could attend the meeting in Havana, return to Miami from Havana, and then fly on to Grenada for the
summer school.
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At the meeting in Havana, I was even able to present a paper, “Problems of Socioeconomic Transition
in Grenada.” No serious ideological disputes arose among the participants at the meeting. The U.S.
participants were not happy with the reply of the Cuban Minister of Culture when asked whether Cuba
had an affirmative action policy in regard to Afro-Cubans. His reply was that there is no Afro Cuban
problem. All Cubans have a mixed origin. He would have been identified by the audience as a white
Cuban. He said when he went to England nobody would have seen him as Little Lord Fauntleroy. I am
not sure that he was being completely honest in his remarks. During many subsequent visits to Cuba, I
could see that particular attention was given to the praise of outstanding black Cuban writers and artists.
On the other hand, it was not until the 1990s that Afro-Cuban music festivals came into being. During my
last visit to Cuba in 1998, I asked an elderly black Cuban maintenance man with whom I had become
acquainted at the hotel that I usually stayed at during my visits, “What is the most important thing for you
about the Cuban Revolution?” He pointed to the skin on his arm and replied, “It is better for the black
man.”
Bumpy beginning, but successful ending of two-week summer workshop
When my Havana to Miami flight landed, my baggage was missing. I had to go on to Grenada
without the books and notes that I needed for the summer school. Moreover, the only clothes that I had
were those I was wearing. I learned later that my baggage had mistakenly been sent to Minneapolis. In
Grenada, the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Social Affairs assigned us to a cottage with bedrooms
and a kitchen and a cook to prepare our meals. Housecleaning services were also provided. I immediately
set to work reconstructing from memory my notes for the two-week school. In the climate in Grenada
during our visit, if I washed any articles of clothing and hung them up to dry before going to bed, they
would be dry in the morning.
Thirty to thirty-five of the fifty-five high-school science high-school teachers signed up voluntarily
for the two-week school. This was a good turnout considering that it was during their summer vacation
and they received only reimbursement for travel. The University of Minnesota covered my travel
expenses and Princeton University covered Slaby’s expenses. The Foundation for Scientific and
Economic Cooperation with Granada covered Matuszak’s travel and a grant from the National Council of
Churches covered the equipment needed for the school. Slaby and I lectured the first week, after which
Slaby returned to Princeton. Since Matuszak and I were to teach the second week, he arrived at the end of
the first week.
During the first week, I lectured on structural development of matter from the level of elementary
particles through chemical atoms, and finally to the “biological” molecules with emphasis on the role of
energy relationships in the development of these systems. Slaby illustrated the construction of laboratory
models of solar-and wind-powered devices for agriculture. We both worked closely with the Grenadian
teachers on techniques of constructing classroom demonstration equipment based on locally available
materials.
During the second week, Matuszak presented a survey of problems of tropical agriculture and animal
husbandry with emphasis on soil, plant, and animal chemistry. I lectured on the philosophical foundations
of scientific methodology.
The first session began on a Monday morning. On Wednesday afternoon, one of the high-school
teachers told us that they were going to have meeting at which we were not to be present. On Thursday
morning we learned that the meeting was held, because some of the high-school teachers felt that the
theoretical content of what we were presenting was too abstract and divorced from the needs of an
underdeveloped country like Grenada. They did not want the school to continue. Others, however, argued
that the initial content had to be highly theoretical in order to lay the basis for application of the theory.
This view prevailed and we were told to continue. No further problems arose.
The last session of the school turned into a celebration, with praise after praise being heaped on us by
the high-school teachers. One teacher commented, “Never in my entire life have I learned so much in two
weeks as I learned during the two weeks we just concluded.
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Matuszak took the last flight out of Pearls that day. I was to fly out in the morning. About midnight,
while standing in the kitchen of the cottage in my undershorts washing my trousers, I heard a knock on
the kitchen window near the sink. Apparently, I had not heard the knock on the door because of noise of
the water running in sink and the person doing the knocking saw the kitchen light. It turned out that it was
the Minister of Education, Youth, and Social Affairs, Jacqueline Creft (1947–83), whom I had not met
before. I wrung out my trousers, put them on, and invited her into the cottage. She apologized for the late
hour. She said her duties kept her in her office to this late hour, but she wanted to come to thank us for
conducting the school for the high-school science teachers, which she had heard had been marvelous and
so important for Grenada.
Implosion of People’s Revolutionary Government
I made one more trip to Grenada in the summer of 1983. During this trip, I was invited to a reception
at which I was introduced to Maurice Bishop. He asked me how I thought his recent visit to the United
States (in June) was received. He was received coolly by officials in Washington, but was warmly
received by supporters of Grenada in several other cities he visited. I noted his warm reception by
supporters of Grenada, and that would serve to stir up more interest in opposition to U.S. policy, but not
yet on a scale enough to affect U.S. policy.
On this trip, I picked up two Grenadian men about twenty years old who were hitching a ride to
downtown St. George’s from the area of the Hopkin hotel at which I was staying. When I told them that I
was from the U.S.-Grenada Friendship Society, they took this to mean that I was more knowledgeable
than they were about Grenadian politics. I was amused by their asking me, “How goes the Revo?”
The implosion of the revolution only a few months later, in October, and the U.S. invasion that
followed, was tragedy brought on by the combination of underdevelopment and ultraleftism. The crisis
became visible when Maurice Bishop was placed under house on 12 October 1983 arrest after refusing to
become what would essentially be only a figurehead of an NJM under the de facto leadership of Bernard
Coard under the guise of joint leadership with him. The reports of the crisis in the New York Times were
XXXaccompanied by the display of popular support for Bishop, photos of slogans attached to buses in
Grenada reading: “No Bishop, No Revo!” On 19 October, a crowd of 4,000 to 5,000 people freed him
from house arrest. Bishop and a group of his supporters went to Fort Rupert, the headquarters of the
People’s Revolutionary Army and persuaded them to disarm and hand out arms to Bishop’s supporters.
An army assault unit loyal to Coard arrived at Fort Rupert in three trucks and in and seized control of the
fort in a gun fight. Bishop and seven high-ranking supporters were lined up and executed. Among those
executed were three of those I have already mentioned in my account: Vincent Noel, Norris Bain, and
Jacqueline Creft.
The New Jewel Movement had been prematurely transformed into a Marxist-Leninist Party. Fear that
the anti-Communism of the churches and national bourgeoisie would be used against it if were to function
openly as a Communist party, led to shielding its internal policy discussions from the public. Grenada had
already witnessed the downfall of the progressive Michel Manley government in Jamaica as a result of an
onslaught of charges of communism that were furiously propagated with U.S. financial support by
Jamaican churches on the eve of parliamentary elections. Due to concern about influx of careerists into
the NJM, the size of the membership was severely restricted. Just before the political crisis of 1983 the
full members of the party numbered only about seventy. About 230 applicants and candidates were
awaiting admission. Even the Ambassador to the United Nations, Dessima Williams was kept as a
candidate-member. The small Central Committee was made up of seventeen members from which an
eight-person Political Bureau was constituted as the principal decision-making body in Grenada
(O'Shaughnessy 1984, 84). Because of the inability to function openly as a Marxist-Leninist Party, the
Central Committee was not in a position to involve the membership in the solution of the more serious
problems it had to face until its final crisis. The principle of democratic centralism could not be
implemented without a two-way exchange of views.
`376
The NJM leaders were well aware that any display of disunity among the Grenadians would lead the
United States government to move quickly to attack Grenada. The constant threat from the United States
exacerbated the organizational difficulties.
In this situation, there was no way of resolving the type of dispute that arose within the NJM
leadership, once it had arisen, except by compromise. The Central Committee, swayed by Coard’s
ultraleftism decided that Maurice Bishop should be a public spokesman for the NJM's policies, while
Bernard Coard should have greater responsibility in developing these policies within the NJM. Bishop
was criticized for being soft, indecisive, and not sufficiently organized, but his closeness to the people and
the affection they had for him made him indispensable. Coard, on the other hand, was criticized earlier for
his lack of contact with the masses (Munroe, 101). The decisive question proved not to be the correctness
or incorrectness of the proposal for joint leadership, but the adoption of it once it became clear that it was
unacceptable to Bishop.
Once the decision was made, there was no way of implementing it without the agreement of Bishop
and his supporters. Moreover, it should have been evident that there was no way of removing Bishop
from leadership when the party's ties with the masses of working people were not on a basis which
allowed open discussion of these problems with the masses of nonparty working people. Furthermore,
allied with Bishop in the dispute were several NJM leaders with ties to strongest trade-unions in Grenada,
such as Vincent Noel, president of the Agricultural and General Workers Union, and Norris Bain,
president of the Bank and General Workers Union. It should have been clear that an attempt to force
Bishop into a role he did not want to accept had the potential for disaster. Indeed the house arrest of
Bishop triggered a wave of strikes throughout the island.
The moment Bishop was placed under house arrest the dispute between the Bishop and Coard became
irrelevant in relation to the larger issue of survival of the revolutionary government. Bishop had the
support and respect, not only of the working masses, but also of most other patriotic sections of the
population. The multiclass character of the revolutionary-democratic government would be undermined
by the panic that was sure to encompass the national bourgeoisie. I mentioned the statement of Royston
Hopkin about Holiday Inn holding a pistol to the head of the government. I also remembered his praise on
another occasion of the realistic was that the government had drawn up the national budget. Shortly after
the invasion, the violence of the internal conflict in the NJM obviously had terrified him. I caught a
glimpse of him on a TV news broadcast where he was shown pleading with the U.S. occupation
authorities not to cut short the occupation. A survey of public opinion in Grenada taken by a team from
the Institute of Social and Economic Research of the University of the West Indies in 1984, a year after
the U.S. invasion, showed that 86.2 percent of those questioned viewed Bishop favorably and a majority
(54.7 percent) still felt that conditions under the People's Revolutionary Government had improved (only
18.8 percent believed conditions had worsened). Moreover 63.2 percent still had favorable attitudes
toward the Cuban presence, with 93.9 percent acknowledging the helpful character of the Cuban
assistance. Yet 88.1 percent had positive attitudes toward the landing of U.S. troops, 78.9 percent of these
giving as the reason that U.S. troops saved them from Coard, only 1.9 percent giving as the reason `saved
us from communism” (Emmanuel, Brathwaite, and Barriteau 1986, 22-44).
The house arrest of Bishop was certain to undermine the national unity which the People's
Revolutionary Government reflected. The issues had not been presented to the population, or even to the
NJM members until after the fact. In the atmosphere that existed, the assassination of Bishop and his
closest comrades was the death knell of the revolution, which is why Fidel Castro declared that the U.S.
conquest of Grenada was a Pyrrhic victory and moral defeat, for the United States had conquered a
corpse.
The airport was completed after the U.S. invasion and named the Point Salines International Airport. I
was delighted to learn that a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Tillman Thomas on 31 May 2009, the
airport was renamed the Maurice Bishop International Airport. Among the foreign dignitaries present
were the Cuban Vice President Esteban Lazo Hernandez and Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit of
Dominica and Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.