Prof Hamid Ghany

Forty-sev­en years ago next Fri­day, Mau­rice Bish­op and the New Jew­el Move­ment (NJM) over­threw the gov­ern­ment of prime min­is­ter Sir Er­ic Gairy. This ush­ered in the Peo­ple’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Gov­ern­ment (PRG) in Grena­da and was the first non-de­mo­c­ra­t­ic trans­fer of pow­er in the An­glo­phone Caribbean by a Marx­ist-Lenin­ist move­ment.

In over­throw­ing Gairy, the De­c­la­ra­tion of the Grena­da Rev­o­lu­tion said that con­sti­tu­tion­al gov­ern­ment “had been in­ter­rupt­ed as a con­se­quence of the vi­o­la­tions and abus­es of democ­ra­cy com­mit­ted by the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Er­ic Matthew Gairy un­der the guise of con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty.”

The PRG sought to change the di­rec­tion of Grena­da to­wards a path of Marx­ist-Lenin­ist gov­er­nance and econ­o­my. It co­in­cid­ed with the con­cur­rent at­tempts in Ja­maica and Guyana that came through the bal­lot box, with Guyana’s bal­lot box ex­pe­ri­ence in 1968 and 1973 be­ing fraud­u­lent.

This di­rec­tion­al change in Grena­da would be­come the source of deep in­ter­nal dis­cord in­side the NJM that formed the PRG be­tween the hard­line Marx­ist-Lenin­ists led by deputy prime min­is­ter Bernard Coard, op­posed to the more mod­er­ate so­cial­ists like prime min­is­ter Mau­rice Bish­op and his al­lies.

This is­sue came to a head by 1982, one year be­fore the im­plo­sion of the regime. In 1983, a coup with­in a coup was led by Gen­er­al Hud­son Austin, who de­clared him­self the head of the Peo­ple’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Army (PRA). He had the sup­port of Coard. Bish­op was placed un­der house ar­rest on Oc­to­ber 13 and was lat­er as­sas­si­nat­ed by fir­ing squad af­ter his re­lease on Oc­to­ber 19.

Richard Hart, writ­ing the In­tro­duc­tion to In No­body’s Back­yard: Mau­rice Bish­op’s Speech­es 1979–1983: A Memo­r­i­al Vol­ume at p. xxv, con­firms that in Sep­tem­ber 1982 deputy prime min­is­ter Coard re­signed as a mem­ber of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee of the NJM and its sub-com­mit­tees.

Among Coard’s rea­sons for re­sign­ing was a com­plaint about the slack­ness of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee and the fail­ure of mem­bers to speak out frankly when things went wrong. He had al­ways been out­spo­ken on such oc­ca­sions while oth­er mem­bers had re­mained silent.

As a re­sult, he had been sus­pect­ed of seek­ing to dis­cred­it the lead­er­ship and had been ac­cused of seek­ing pow­er. As he was not pre­pared to have per­son­al­i­ty clash­es with Bish­op, he de­cid­ed to re­sign.

The Com­mit­tee de­cid­ed to con­ceal from the oth­er mem­bers of the par­ty that Coard had re­signed, and Coard co-op­er­at­ed by not dis­clos­ing that he had re­signed and con­tin­ued to dis­charge his state func­tions as if noth­ing had hap­pened. They kept the se­cret for one year.

The peo­ple of Grena­da were be­ing de­ceived in­to be­liev­ing that noth­ing was wrong in the NJM and the PRG. Richard Hart re­vealed more at p. xvii that the Min­utes of the NJM Cen­tral Com­mit­tee for Sep­tem­ber 14–16, 1983, record­ed Bish­op’s con­clu­sions about the state of the rev­o­lu­tion as fol­lows:

(a) There is a state of deep cri­sis in the par­ty and rev­o­lu­tion.

(b) The main rea­son for these weak­ness­es is the func­tion­ing of the CC (Cen­tral Com­mit­tee).

(c) The cri­sis has al­so be­come a ma­jor con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the cri­sis in the coun­try, the rev­o­lu­tion and the low mood of the mass­es.

(d) The cri­sis has al­so been com­pound­ed by the weak­ness in the ma­te­r­i­al base, elec­tri­cal block cuts, bad roads, re­trench­ments and jobs as an is­sue.

Hart al­so re­vealed that Liam James, a mem­ber of the CC, crit­i­cised the lead­er­ship of Bish­op for this state of af­fairs and ar­tic­u­lat­ed for the meet­ing the list of qual­i­ties that he felt Bish­op lacked:

(i) A Lenin­ist lev­el of or­gan­i­sa­tion.

(ii) Great depth in ide­o­log­i­cal clar­i­ty.

(iii) Bril­liance in strat­e­gy and tac­tics.

Bish­op was blind­sided as no one had ever crit­i­cised him per­son­al­ly ex­cept Coard.

Hart tells us at p. xxix that there was a pro­pos­al for a joint lead­er­ship for­mu­la with Bish­op and Coard which was agreed by ma­jor­i­ty vote.

Bish­op left for Hun­gary and Czecho­slo­va­kia the next day. Af­ter he re­turned on Oc­to­ber 8, 1983, he told the CC meet­ing on Oc­to­ber 12 that he had changed his mind. Hart re­veals the de­ci­sion and con­firms that there are no min­utes for that meet­ing.

The bot­tom line is that the so­cial­ist ex­per­i­ment in Grena­da was an abysmal fail­ure, just like Ja­maica and Guyana. Grena­da in­tro­duced a lev­el of pol­i­tics found­ed on the need for hard-line Marx­ist-Lenin­ist ide­ol­o­gy.

The at­trac­tion to so­cial­ism still ex­ists to­day in many pock­ets across Cari­com and man­i­fests it­self in overt pub­lic crit­i­cism of any de­sire to sup­port cap­i­tal­ism and free en­ter­prise, de­spite the wider re­gion­al fail­ures in Cu­ba and Venezuela.

This is not a re­vival of a 1980s de­bate, but rather an al­ter­na­tive de­vel­op­men­tal ap­proach.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar met with US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and oth­er Latin Amer­i­can lead­ers in Mi­a­mi yes­ter­day.

There is now hope.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.