To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

A fi­nal cur­tain fell yes­ter­day on a Caribbean dra­ma, whose first act en­tailed the vi­o­lent March, 1979, over­throw of Grena­da Prime Min­is­ter Er­ic Gairy. The re­main­ing sev­en of the no­to­ri­ous "Grena­da 17," found guilty of the 1983 as­sas­si­na­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Mau­rice Bish­op and much of his Cab­i­net, were re­leased yes­ter­day af­ter decades of im­pris­on­ment. Such is the his­tor­i­cal out­come of a big rev­o­lu­tion in a small is­land, as Cuban leader Fi­del Cas­tro called it. While it last­ed, the Grena­da rev­o­lu­tion fig­ured in then Cold-War su­per­pow­er ri­val­ry be­tween the Unit­ed States and the So­vi­et Union. In a de­par­ture from Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean norms, an armed force pro­ject­ed by the New Jew­el Move­ment de­posed and ban­ished Gairy, and de­clared in­to be­ing a Peo­ple's Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Gov­ern­ment.

Er­ic Gairy, though con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-elect­ed, had reigned tyran­ni­cal­ly and quixot­i­cal­ly. He de­ployed a "Mon­goose Gang" of thugs to beat and kill op­po­si­tion fig­ures. The pop­u­lar force that over­threw his rule ac­tu­al­ly in­clud­ed mem­bers of the par­lia­men­tary op­po­si­tion. By 1979, they had be­come rad­i­calised through their ill-treat­ment by Gairy, and well-found­ed fears of fur­ther vi­o­lence, and al­so by their read­ings of then-in­flu­en­tial Marx­ist the­o­ry and prax­is. Mau­rice Bish­op, a young, ar­tic­u­late lawyer, and charis­mat­ic leader, be­came the Prime Min­is­ter of Grena­da's Peo­ple's Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Gov­ern­ment, and the icon­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a left-wing Caribbean rev­o­lu­tion. The Bish­op regime en­joyed pop­u­lar sup­port in Grena­da, and gained en­dorse­ment and as­sis­tance from left-wing or­gan­i­sa­tions and gov­ern­ments around the world.

In in­creas­ing alarm, how­ev­er, T&T and the Caribbean watched as Bish­op ig­nored ap­peals to ho­n­our pledges to le­git­imise his rule by the hold­ing of free elec­tions. Worse, Grena­da's "Re­vo," as it was af­fec­tion­ate­ly called, soon dis­played even more ac­tive, and sys­tem­at­ic, hos­til­i­ty to dis­sent than did the Gairy regime it had re­placed. It shut down one news­pa­per, banned an­oth­er and de­tained its pub­lish­ers with­out tri­al. Rul­ing by de­cree, it dis­pensed with both the essence and the trap­pings of fa­mil­iar, Caribbean, con­sti­tu­tion­al democ­ra­cy. Mean­while, the Re­vo pro­claimed it­self to be cre­at­ing al­ter­na­tive, pro­gres­sive, mod­els of pop­u­lar par­tic­i­pa­tion in gov­ern­ment and the econ­o­my. It ran mass lit­er­a­cy cam­paigns, and mo­bilised young peo­ple for pa­tri­ot­ic ser­vice to coun­try and so­ci­ety. All this went along, how­ev­er, with a steady mil­i­tari­sa­tion of Grena­da. Se­cu­ri­ty cam­paigns tar­get­ed those al­leged­ly hatch­ing "desta­bil­i­sa­tion" plots, with Amer­i­can as­sis­tance.

The coun­try was kept on a con­stant war foot­ing. Rev­o­lu­tion­ary rhetoric sus­tained a psy­cho­log­i­cal cli­mate of fear for the sur­vival of a regime be­set by en­e­mies with­in and out­side. Dis­sent was crim­i­nalised as "counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ary." Free­dom of ex­pres­sion and of the press was ex­tin­guished. In the events to which yes­ter­day's pris­on­er re­lease was the ul­ti­mate se­quel, a bit­ter dis­pute, on ide­o­log­i­cal grounds, split the rul­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary for­ma­tion.

Mau­rice Bish­op be­came him­self the vic­tim of the re­pres­sive sys­tem he had run: his col­leagues put him un­der house ar­rest. A crowd of his sup­port­ers even­tu­al­ly freed the em­bat­tled prime min­is­ter, and marched with him to the hill­top fort, where his ri­vals were en­trenched.

Hell lit­er­al­ly broke loose. The Peo­ple's Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Army turned its guns on the peo­ple, and ri­val rev­o­lu­tion­ary lead­ers seized and ex­e­cut­ed Bish­op and his clos­est al­lies. As Grena­da plunged in­to ter­ror and ru­in, US and Caribbean (but not T&T) troops, in­vad­ed.

In short or­der, every of­fi­cial, phys­i­cal, and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture stand­ing in the name of rev­o­lu­tion was dis­man­tled. The killers of Bish­op were ar­rest­ed, tried and even­tu­al­ly con­demned. A Caribbean ex­per­i­ment in rev­o­lu­tion failed spec­tac­u­lar­ly. The ex­pe­ri­ence, how­ev­er, con­firmed the ne­ces­si­ty, re­gard­less of pre­vail­ing po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions, of pre­serv­ing and ex­tend­ing rights and free­doms.