A 30-year personal

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revealed a tragic flaw in the politics and orientation of this once exemplary revolutionary party.

I resigned a few days after the U.S. invasion, to be among the founders of Socialist Action, but not before observing close up—and against the wishes of the SWP leadership—the tragic events surrounding Gre­ nada’s internal travail and disintegration.

The origins of Grenada’s March 13, 1979, revolution are not well known. The 13th of March, an unlucky day in the minds of the superstitious, was chosen by Grenada’s president for a trip to New York City to at­ tend a conference whose agenda focused on flying saucers, the occult, and extra-terrestrial communica­ tion. Knighted in 1974 by Great Britain’s queen as Sir Mathew Eric Gairy, he had demons that extended to literally banning the construction of left turn lanes on the few roads that surrounded this volcanic mountain nation. With half of its people unemployed and living in poverty, and 70 percent of its women workforce un­ employed, Grenada’s sneering critics had long derided it as “the armpit of the Caribbean.”

Before Gairy’s departure, he left word for his notori­ ous secret death squad, the Mongoose Gang, to assas­ sinate the young 34-year-old revolutionary, Maurice Bishop, and his comrades, whose New Jewel (Joint En­ deavor for Welfare, Education and Liberation) Move­ ment and its allied parties had in fact won the previ­ ous Grenadian election only to have the results voided at Gairy’s diktat.

But secrets are hard to keep in a small nation like Grenada. A few friends informed Bishop and his comrades of Gairy’s assassination directive. These young revolutionaries, whose choices were limited indeed—most obviously, to flee the island or hide— hastily planned a response that had more than a few stunning, if not unexpected results. Their plan began on March 13 at 4:30 a.m. with an armed assault by Bishop and a relatively small group of supporters on Grenada’s True Blue military barracks, where almost all of Grenada’s tiny army lay asleep. Some 20-50 ac­ tivists participated, most having had no prior military experience. Gairy’s troops quickly surrendered, tak­ ing but a handful of casualties.

Grenada’s sole radio station, instantly renamed Ra­ dio Free Grenada, was captured at 10:30 that morn­ ing. Bishop delivered his famous address, “A Bright

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(continued from page 6: “Grenada: A big revolution in a small country”)

Cuba provided a fleet of more than a dozen state of the art fishing boats, transforming Grenada’s 5000odd tiny and dangerous dingy-like boats into a more efficient operation while cutting down on waste and the need to import food. Previously, much of the caught fish were dried on tin roofs, only to rot when Grenada’s tropical rain ruined much of the catch. Re­ frigeration facilities were similarly improved by Cuba, which allowed for the preservation of fish, as well as fruits and vegetables. A program to increase the avail­ ability of electricity was set into motion on an island where the great majority had none.

Again with the help of the Cubans, medical and den­ tal care became free to all, with the number of doc­ tors, although still far from meeting the needs of the people, dramatically increasing in a few years. Prior to the revolution there was only one dental clinic serving the entire island.

In four short years, unemployment was reduced from 49 percent to 14.2 percent. Virtually free loans for construction materials to repair dilapidated hous­ ing, the sad living norm for most Grenadians, were provided, while a broad range of infrastructure im­ provements were undertaken. Roads had barely exist­ ed in Grenada; there were only some 48 miles in total before the revolution. A new series of roads were built to aid local farmers in bringing their crops to market. Pipe-borne water, which the great majority had had no previous access to, was significantly expanded, and rusted pipes were repaired.

With help of the Cubans, agriculture was diversified, especially since Grenada, the world largest nutmeg producer, was dependent for income on three export crops—nutmeg, cocoa, and bananas.

Thirty percent of the population was excluded from taxation while the few wealthy hotel owners saw their taxes, which they had barely paid due to an almost total lack of an accounting system regarding hotel revenues, significantly increased. Women’s equality, including equal pay for equal work, was enshrined in Grenadian law, along with extended and paid mater­ nity leave. The law strictly banned all sexual exploita­ tion of women in return for employment.

All of these critical gains notwithstanding, almost everyone understood that Grenada, essentially a huge mountain with poor soil conditions and surrounded by a single road, was currently incapable of putting into effect more dramatic and long lasting improve­ ments. The PRG leadership moved to resolve this di­ lemma by embarking on the construction of a major international airport, able to provide access to the world’s modern airplanes. With significant loans from Canada and the allocation of vast human resources, again from revolutionary Cuba, Grenadian and Cuban workers began construction on this project aimed at promoting tourism as the major source of income in the years to come. Grenada’s antiquated Pearl Airport was capable of landing only small turboprop planes with a capacity of some 30-50 people.

Perhaps the most controversial debate inside the PRG was the very nature of the system of governance to be established. Early on, the revolution, especially at Bishop’s prodding, established a system of what was called participatory democracy, wherein work­ ers’ and farmers’ councils, parish councils, and zonal councils met to discuss the revolution’s priorities and how they could best be achieved.

While these groups initially met with great enthusi­ asm and were well attended, in time attendance de­ clined when the participants came to understand that there was a qualitative difference between the partici­ pation of the masses, including their right to criticize and recommend important changes, and their right to decide. While the leaders of these councils were often elected and subject to immediate recall, their role re­ mained advisory. Key decisions remained in the hands of the revolution’s main leaders, organized in a Cen­ tral Committee of some dozen individuals.

Bishop was known to advocate increased decision-making power to the local councils. Coard defended maintaining the power and authority of the Central Committee. The size of the organized core of the New Jewel Movement was likely quite small, at best in the hundreds. Even here, however, the NJM rarely, if ever, met as a decision-making body.

I first noted tensions in the PRG when I visited to attend the Nov. 23-25, 1981, First International Con­ ference in Solidarity with Grenada and to deliver a relatively large amount of supplies to support their literacy campaign. Our Bay Area committee was fortu­ nate to link up with a San Francisco GreenPeace group sailing a sizeable ship toward Grenada and agreeable to cramming its hold with tons of supplies. This was for the “welfare of the Grenadians,” they explained, “as well as to provide needed ballast for the ship to insure its safe voyage.”

I was quite surprised to meet Bishop during this conference when he asked for a meeting to discuss a conflict we were experiencing in the Bay Area with the recently formed U.S.-Grenada Friendship Society. Our Grenada Solidarity Committee, formed two years earlier, had established close ties with Grenada’s UN Consul General, Joseph Kanute Burke, who we toured through the Bay Area twice during that time. Yet we were shunned by the Communist Party-initiated U.S.Grenada Friendship Society as being illegitimate. Through Burke, this had come to the attention of Bish­ op, who expressed concern that I was not scheduled to address the conference.

Bishop was quite familiar with the Socialist Work­ ers Party. When he resided in Brooklyn, N.Y., where more than 80,000 Grenadian nationals lived, he was an occasional speaker at SWP-sponsored Militant La­ bor Forums. When the SWP’s 1980 U.S. Presidential candidate, Andrew Pulley, visited Grenada in 1981, he received a surprise visit from Bishop, who humor­ ously asked, “Hey Andrew, what are you doing on my island?” Bishop, driving an old VW Bug, proceeded to give Pulley a personal tour.

During the conference Bishop learned that it was a representative of the U.S. Communist Party that sought to prevent me from greeting the conference. His response was to send his closest ally, Minister of Agriculture George Louison, to resolve this matter in a three-way meeting. Louison sternly explained to the CPer that Grenada valued our work and operated on the principle of non-exclusion. I would speak as the U.S. representative, he insisted, as he urged future col­ laboration between all Grenada’s supporters.

Bishop’s June 5, 1983, visit to New York has been cited by some as a possible source of the divisions that would be revealed some three months later. Some uninformed “left critics” noted that Bishop advocated in his talk improved relations with the United States, including U.S. recognition of a Grenadian ambassador. The “critics” implied that Bishop was “soft” on imperi­ alism. Yet Bishop advocated no more than the Cubans, who had been denied formal recognition for decades.

But in explaining the functioning of Grenada’s par­ ticipatory democracy, Bishop did employ some for­ mulations that could be taken as important, if not critical, insights into a sharpening controversy inside the PRG. Bishop stated: “And for the people in gen­ eral, there have been organs of popular democracy that have been built—zonal councils, parish councils, worker-parish councils, farmer councils—where the people come together from month to month. The usu­ al agenda will be a report on programs taking place in the village.

“Then there will be a report, usually by some senior member of the bureaucracy. It might be the manager of the Central Water Commission. Or it might be the manager of the telephone company or the electricity company. Or it might be the chief sanitary inspector, or the senior price-control inspector.

“And this senior bureaucrat has to go there and re­ port to the people on his area of work, and then be Maurice Bishop (left) with Fidel Castro.

submitted to a question-and-answer ses­ sion. And after that, one of the top leaders in our country, one of us will also attend those meetings, and ourselves give a report, and usually there is question-and-answer-time at the end of that also. “In this way, our people from day to day and week to week, are participating in helping to run the affairs of their country. And this is not just an abstract matter of principle. It has also brought practical, concrete benefits to our people.”

Bishop’s references here to “senior members of the bureaucracy” and “this senior bureaucrat” may not have been accidental, especially in light of his experi­ ence in the Central Committee, where a twisted ver­ sion of “democratic centralism” prevailed—that is, a bureaucratically enforced muzzle banning criticism of “majority” decisions without recourse to democratic discussion and debate in the party’s ranks, not to mention among the increasingly organized masses in the emerging and varied councils.

In truth, there were no “ranks” of the PGR or the NJM that met to decide anything. Power was vested in the hands of a tiny few—the Central Committee. As I have noted, a few months later, Bishop was ar­ rested because he sought to challenge this Coard-led bureaucracy, based on the rule of perhaps a dozen or so leaders. Vesting real power in the various councils that had been established was not on Coard’s agenda.

Although no formal records exist of its decisions, the debates in the tiny Central Committee were “resolved” in Coard’s favor, and Bishop, while retaining the title of prime minister, saw his authority much diminished. He was soon afterwards sent to Czechoslovakia on a trade mission and returned to Grenada via Cuba. Upon his return he was reported to have informed the Cen­ tral Committee of his intention to challenge its orien­ tation, whereupon he was immediately placed under “house arrest,” incarcerated, and placed under armed guard in his own house at Mount Wheldale, literally across the road from Coard’s dwelling.

When news of Bishop’s arrest reached his closest associates, Minister of Agriculture George Louison, accompanied by Bishop’s press secretary, Don Rojas, quickly organized a mass march to Bishop’s home to free the island’s most well-known and popular lead­ er—“Bish,” as he was called by friends everywhere.

The march to liberate Bishop and its arrival at his home was observed first hand by a member of our San Francisco Bay Area Grenada Solidarity Committee, whom we had sent to assist with Grenada’s literacy program. This mass mobilization rapidly grew until tens of thousands participated. Bishop was freed with zero resistance and immediately proceeded to lead the marchers to Fort Rupert, Grenada’s military head­ quarters in the capital city, St. Georges, and Coard’s likely location.

Bishop led the angry marchers onto this ancient stonewalled fort’s patio, whereupon he and his as­ sociates were gunned down at the orders of Coard’s appointed “General,” Hudson Austin. Three minis­ ters were murdered outright—including Bishop and his companion and Minister of Education Jacqueline Creft—and two leading trade unionists. As Coard’s tiny death squad fired on the crowd, killing perhaps a (continued on page 9, in “NDP leader attacks First Nations, activists”)

SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 2013 7

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website: http://socialistaction.ca Rather than host a convention of labour activists and members of the labour-based New Democratic

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With the support of revolutionary volunteers from many nations — especially Cuba — Grenadians set out to be a beacon to the world.