People's Revolutionary Government Research Articles

Perspectives on the Grenada Revolution, 1979–1983 ed. by Nicole Phillip-Dowe and John Angus Martin

Reviewed by: Perspectives on the Grenada Revolution, 1979–1983 ed. by Nicole Phillip-Dowe and John Angus Martin Robert Sierakowski (bio) Perspectives on the Grenada Revolution, 1979–1983 Nicole Phillip-Dowe and John Angus Martin (ed.), Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017. 189 pp. In the space of several days in October 1983, the Grenada Revolution, the first socialist revolution in the English-speaking Caribbean, came to its truly shocking conclusion. Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, the charismatic and internationally renowned leader of the New Jewel Movement (NJM), was treacherously assassinated along with several associates as part of an internal power struggle with other members of the revolutionary movement. Six days later, the United States administration of Ronald Reagan – which had long antagonized and threatened the People's Revolutionary Government– dispatched American military forces in a full-scale invasion of the tiny island nation (with the complicity of regional governments). The revolution's inspiring promise of a popular transformation that would provide health, education, and employment for the masses had not only been crushed by foreign intervention, but also discredited by the fratricidal violence within the NJM itself. This new edited volume by Nicole Phillip-Dowe and John Angus Martin returns to the dramatic events of the early 1980s and "captures the Grenada Revolution from a Grenada perspective" (xi). Aside from one essay, all of the papers were written by Grenadian authors from various personal perspectives and academic disciplines. The 12 chapters were selected from 16 papers presented at a 2016 University of the West Indies Open Campus conference held in Grenada. Given the more than three decades that have passed since the revolution's tragic denouement, the writers seek to foster a more nuanced and complex interpretation, transcending Manichean visions of "saints and devils, martyrs and traitors", as Shalini Puri puts it (176). Indeed, some of the early chapters prove rather polemical and controversial revisions of received wisdom. Lawrence A. Joseph, for example, looks back on the March 1979 uprising that toppled the regime of Eric Gairy, arguing that in strictly juridical [End Page 203] terms "the revolution" amounted to a mere coup d'état by "usurpers" (17), given the NJM's inability to impose a new institutional order through democratic elections. Joseph Ewart Layne, on the other hand, writes from the first-hand perspective of a revolutionary leader who spent 26 years behind bars following the American invasion for his role in the events of 1983. While he offers something of a mea culpa for NJM errors and abuses, he insists that it was the leadership's "missteps in strategy formation and implementation" that led to the disastrous outcome, rather than "ideological conflict and personal ambition for power" (29–30). Many of the chapters in volume's middle section look back on the revolution's four-and-a-half years of social transformation in areas such as women's rights, youth engagement, and church–state relations. In many of these spheres, the papers aim to document both the hope, creativity, and promise of these idealistic revolutionary projects, while acknowledging the far messier historical realities. Nicole Phillip-Dowe's chapter on the National Women's Organization (NWO) established during the revolution demonstrates the many successes of this group in educational and social projects directed at children, as well as its leading role in community development, such as improving roads and cleaning up neighbourhoods. At the same time, she shows how the NWO functioned as a subsidiary of the NJM and, despite successful reforms (such as the Maternity Leave and Equal Pay Laws), it remained very difficult for prominent women to balance party work and family obligations. In her chapter, Claudette Joseph describes her experiences as a part of the revolution's Young Pioneers movement as a child, recalling the early 1980s as a period with "a deep sense of community, national pride and patriotism" (79). Her memories of childhood in the revolutionary era are extremely positive, as she reflects on the various initiatives that she personally experienced during that heady period of social transformation. As with Phillip-Dowe's discussion of the NWO, however, Joseph also details the darker aspects of the years of New Jewel rule, such as...

‘Shrouded in Some Mystery’: The Governor General's Invitation and the 1983 Grenada Intervention

ABSTRACTOn 25 October 1983 the United States, supported by several Caribbean states, intervened militarily in the commonwealth Caribbean island of Grenada. Operation Urgent Fury followed the implosion of the Marxist-Leninist People's Revolutionary Government and execution of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several colleagues. This article examines the alleged request for external assistance made by the Grenadian governor general, Sir Paul Scoon. It will examine the discrepancies between Scoon's memoir account of the episode and the official record to reveal that Scoon made no such request. The origins of the request emerged from discussions between Caribbean and US officials and it was brought to fruition by the Barbadian prime minister, Tom Adams.

Re/writing Reconciliation in Merle Collins's Angel

Bodies broken, scattered, bruised.Can you call their names? Who aretheir parents? What are the namesyou are ashamed call?...How pretend not knowof the raw wound in a nationdivided?-Merle Collins, Roll CallIN 2001, A TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION commission was established in Grenada as a means address unresolved tensions in the population surrounding the murders of Maurice Bishop and other Grenadians on 19 October 1983, and other events of national significance. Prime Minister Keith Mitchell contended that a commission modelled after the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission's notion of restorative justice would provide a way for the nation address its past, suture deep wounds in the population, and answer lingering questions. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is one of the most famous examples of restorative justice, having been established address the atrocities of apartheid. It is drawn on the Christian idea of forgiveness and the notion of Ubuntu, a word from the Nguni language family, which means that the individual is always seen in relation what is best for the group.1 At its core, this form of restorative justice has a moral imperative of creating a space where past crimes are revealed and acknowledged in order for the nation move forward in the name of restoring a sense of unity, reconciliation, and forgiveness. In its published report, the Grenada Truth and Reconciliation Commission states that aims to provide the nation an opportunity become genuinely reconciled and permanently healed.2The commission focused on the period of January 1976 December 1991, examining, among other things, the evidence of violence surrounding the overthrow of the government of Eric Gairy, which ushered in the New Jewel Movement; the People's Revolutionary Government during its time in power; and the events of October 1983. Primary concerns of the commission included determining the location of the remains of Maurice Bishop and others who were killed during the coup of 19 October, determining reparations for victims of violence, and examining of the case of the Grenada 17, those people who were imprisoned for the killings of Bishop and others. Between October 2001 and August 2002, the commission accumulated information through public hearings, letters, and various public outreach programmes, visiting family members of victims who died as a result of violence, circulating questionnaires, and researching publications and studies of the time period. Approximately seventy people gave oral testimony. After assessing the problems that needed be addressed, the commission ultimately made a number of recommendations such as erecting memorials those who died of political violence, renaming the airport after Maurice Bishop, and finding the remains of Bishop and other missing victims.3 As such, the commission's report, which was released in 2006 after much delay, represents a means of national reconciliation intent on resurrecting the nation, and performing national memory, while also constructing an official narrative about Grenada's traumatic history.-* Yet scholars David Scott and Jermaine McCalpin contend that the Grenada Truth and Reconciliation Commission largely failed in its mission of national reconciliation. McCalpin notes that many of the Grenadians he interviewed were unaware of the commission, which leads one ask, whose memories are included?* Whose are not? David Scott asserts that the commission was a failure because it offers precious little of any substantial 'truths' by which guide the prospect of the 'reconciliation' they hope for.6 He notes that a glaring omission in the commission's report is the absence of testimonies of the Grenada 17.It is within this context of the troubled search for truth, reconciliation and memory that I examine the 2011 reissuing of Grenadian writer Merle Collins's novel Angel, whose eponymous protagonist comes of age during the revolutionary period as a member of the progressive Horizon Party. …

‘Keeping a Line Open’: Britain and the 1979 Coup in Grenada

On 13 March 1979, the first unconstitutional change of power in the Eastern Caribbean occurred in Grenada, a member of the Commonwealth, when the radical New Jewel Movement overthrew Prime Minister Eric Gairy. This article examines the policy of the British government towards the new People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) during the first month of the ‘revolution’. It demonstrates that in contrast to the alarmist reactions of some of Grenada's neighbours, and the United States' intense concern about the PRG's pro-Cuban leanings, British policy was more optimistic and relaxed and designed to ‘keep a line open’ to Grenada.

Women in the Grenada Revolution, 1979-1983

IThe year 1951 was synonymous in Grenada with the words strike, riot and revolution. It saw the rise of a trade unionist, a people's messiah, in the person of Eric Matthew Gairy, who led the first massive strike action by agricultural workers and later ruled the country as premier and then prime minister from 1951 to 1979. This period saw an increase in wages and an improvement in working conditions for agricultural workers, most of whom were women. It also saw the establishment of a number of women's groups, including the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), the Soroptomists, Lioness Club, Home Industries Association, Home Makers' Association, and Grenada Women's League. These groups were mainly charitable organizations that catered to the needs of poor women, especially in the rural areas. For example, the YWCA and the Home Makers' Association provided advice on domestic science and home management. With the exception of the Grenada Women's League, they had no political affiliation. The Grenada Women's League was the women's arm of Gairy's Grenada United Labour Party (GULP). Like the other women's groups, its vision was limited to charitable work.The Gairy regime encouraged the movement of women into positions of power by his appointment of Dame Hilda Bynoe as first female governor of Grenada and in the British Commonwealth. He also appointed two female ambassadors. Three women won their parliamentary seats on a GULP ticket. One became a minister of government and the other two were parliamentary secretaries. The Gairy government also encouraged the establishment of a Commission on the status of women and Grenada hosted the regional seminar for women in 1970. While female support for Gairy was apparent in the period, there were pockets of discontent and some women joined and took an active role in the main opposition parties, the Grenada National Party (GNP), and the New Jewel Movement (NJM). These women felt that, despite Gairy's projection of an image of promoting and encouraging women, many of their demands were not being met. For example, few day-care centres were built, there were hardly any scholarships for women, equal pay for equal work was not implemented, and women in positions of power within the regime (like men) were not expected to oppose the decisions of his government. The women's groups had raised these issues yet they were not adequately addressed, if addressed at all.IIOn 13 March 1979, the New Jewel Movement staged a military coup that marked the beginning of a new political era for the English-speaking Caribbean with the formation of the socialist People's Revolutionary Government under Maurice Bishop (PRG). Some Gairyite women continued their support for their ousted leader; others transferred their support to the PRG, while still others remained neutral. Another group, the St George's Progressive Women's Association (PWA), opposed the Gairy regime but did not follow the socialist line. Nevertheless, in the early years of the revolution it received some support from the PRG. The PWA was formed in early 1977. Its aims and objectives were:To raise the progressive consciousness of women. . . .To struggle to achieve material and other benefits for our women. . . . Better wages and working conditions, equal pay for working women, day nurseries, training and employment opportunities, proper housing, medical sanitation, recreational and cultural facilities. To struggle against any further encroachments on democratic rights . . . and to extend rights and civil liberties.1Membership was open to any woman residing in Grenada who accepted the goals of the organization. Membership fees were EC$0.50 per month. For unemployed women membership was free. According to Dessima Williams, Grenada's Representative to the United Nations, 1979-1983, the PWA served as a small but effective urban forum for politicizing and organizing middle class women, housewives, teachers, professionals, students and a core of the urban working class. …

Women in the Grenada Revolution, 1979-1983

IThe year 1951 was synonymous in Grenada with the words strike, riot and revolution. It saw the rise of a trade unionist, a people's messiah, in the person of Eric Matthew Gairy, who led the first massive strike action by agricultural workers and later ruled the country as premier and then prime minister from 1951 to 1979. This period saw an increase in wages and an improvement in working conditions for agricultural workers, most of whom were women. It also saw the establishment of a number of women's groups, including the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), the Soroptomists, Lioness Club, Home Industries Association, Home Makers' Association, and Grenada Women's League. These groups were mainly charitable organizations that catered to the needs of poor women, especially in the rural areas. For example, the YWCA and the Home Makers' Association provided advice on domestic science and home management. With the exception of the Grenada Women's League, they had no political affiliation. The Grenada Women's League was the women's arm of Gairy's Grenada United Labour Party (GULP). Like the other women's groups, its vision was limited to charitable work.The Gairy regime encouraged the movement of women into positions of power by his appointment of Dame Hilda Bynoe as first female governor of Grenada and in the British Commonwealth. He also appointed two female ambassadors. Three women won their parliamentary seats on a GULP ticket. One became a minister of government and the other two were parliamentary secretaries. The Gairy government also encouraged the establishment of a Commission on the status of women and Grenada hosted the regional seminar for women in 1970. While female support for Gairy was apparent in the period, there were pockets of discontent and some women joined and took an active role in the main opposition parties, the Grenada National Party (GNP), and the New Jewel Movement (NJM). These women felt that, despite Gairy's projection of an image of promoting and encouraging women, many of their demands were not being met. For example, few day-care centres were built, there were hardly any scholarships for women, equal pay for equal work was not implemented, and women in positions of power within the regime (like men) were not expected to oppose the decisions of his government. The women's groups had raised these issues yet they were not adequately addressed, if addressed at all.IIOn 13 March 1979, the New Jewel Movement staged a military coup that marked the beginning of a new political era for the English-speaking Caribbean with the formation of the socialist People's Revolutionary Government under Maurice Bishop (PRG). Some Gairyite women continued their support for their ousted leader; others transferred their support to the PRG, while still others remained neutral. Another group, the St George's Progressive Women's Association (PWA), opposed the Gairy regime but did not follow the socialist line. Nevertheless, in the early years of the revolution it received some support from the PRG. The PWA was formed in early 1977. Its aims and objectives were:To raise the progressive consciousness of women. . . .To struggle to achieve material and other benefits for our women. . . . Better wages and working conditions, equal pay for working women, day nurseries, training and employment opportunities, proper housing, medical sanitation, recreational and cultural facilities. To struggle against any further encroachments on democratic rights . . . and to extend rights and civil liberties.1Membership was open to any woman residing in Grenada who accepted the goals of the organization. Membership fees were EC$0.50 per month. For unemployed women membership was free. According to Dessima Williams, Grenada's Representative to the United Nations, 1979-1983, the PWA served as a small but effective urban forum for politicizing and organizing middle class women, housewives, teachers, professionals, students and a core of the urban working class. …

Reconsidering the Grenada revolution

[First paragraph]Caribbean Revolutions and Revolutionary Theory: An Assessment of Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada. BRIAN MEEKS. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1993. ix + 210 pp. (Paper n.p.)The Grenada Invasion: Politics, Law, and Foreign Policy Decisionmaking. ROBERT J. BECK. Boulder: Westview, 1993. xiv + 263 pp. (Cloth US$ 49.95)The Gorrión Tree: Cuba and the Grenada Revolution. JOHN WALTON COTMAN. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. xvi + 272 pp. (Cloth US$ 48.95)These three books might be thought of as a second generation of studies concerned with the rise, rule, and destruction of the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) in Grenada. The circumstances surrounding the accession to power in 1979 of the government led by Maurice Bishop, the nature of its rule, and its violent demise in 1983 resulted in the appearance during the mid-1980s of an extensive literature on the Grenada Revolution. Some of these works were scholarly, others polemical. But what they all had in common was the desire to examine, either critically or otherwise, something which was unique in the historical experience of the English-speaking Caribbean. Never, before the rule of the New JEWEL Movement (NJM) in Grenada, had a Leninist party come to power; never had a violent coup initiated a new political regime; never had a Caribbean government so explicitly rejected U.S. hegemony in the area; and never, before October 1983, had a government experienced quite so dramatic a crisis as that in Grenada, one which resulted in the killing of the Prime Minister and numerous others of his supporters.

A study of land redistribution and the demise of Grenada's estate farming system 1940–1988

Throughout this century the demise of the West Indian estate agricultural system has been occurring unrelentlessly. At different times and to varying degrees, the reasons for this have included: local labour problems; absentee landownership; major fluctuations in commodity prices on the world market; and inadequate supportive government policies in many of the region's newly independent nations. The decline of this farming system is most evident in Grenada, where the political events of the past 20 years have hastened the process. Initially, it was the confiscation of some estates through a programme of ‘land for the landless’. Then, between 1979 and 1983 it was People's Revolutionary Government promoting state farms at the expense of individual estates. More recently, the government has been divesting parcels of acquired land to ‘potentially suitable’ small farmers, via a model farm scheme. This paper traces developments on 112 estates since 1940.

State‐press relations in Grenada, 1955–1983

This study focuses on events in Grenada in the 20th century in order to examine the relationship between the media and the state in changing societies. This relationship is explored by reviewing the differing agendas, and their implementation, of Eric Gairy from 1951–1979 and Maurice Bishop and the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) from 1979–1983. In both cases, the role of the media cannot be defined solely using available models. Furthermore, each regime retained media structures that were in place in the colonial era, which perpetuated long‐standing social and cultural attitudes.

Grenada and the IMF

Certainly in the last decade, the relationship between the International Monetary Fund (IMF or Fund) and the world's developing countries has been the subject of fairly detailed research (Gold, 1970; Payer, 1974; Guitian, 1981; Bird, 1982; Killick, 1984). In the Caribbean, the relevance and appropriateness of IMF policies continue to be fiercely challenged (Girvan, Bernal, and Hughes, 1980; Brown, 1981; Thomas, 1982; Sharpley, 1984; and Bernal, 1984). The resolution of a number of issues raised in the wide-ranging debate can only be achieved through in-depth studies of the experiences of various countries with IMF programs. This study deals with specific aspects of Grenada's Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program with the IMF, which was approved in mid-1983 and aborted in October of the same year, following the U.S. invasion of the country. It is important to document this experience not only for historical reasons but also because Grenada (in 1983) was characterized by certain economic and geopolitical features that contributed to the almost unprecedented nature of the experience. Grenada is a very small country (133 square miles; 110,000 people) with an open (foreign trade/GDP ratios of nearly one) and dependent economy; in 1979, a popular revolution took place and the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) explicitly stated its commitment to a socialist-oriented path of development,1 while initiating some of the development policies and programs identified as consistent with the preliminary stages of such an approach. Equally important is Grenada's membership in a regional currency system (Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, then an Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority-ECCA) which contributed to the peculiarly specific nature of the country's monetary and financial framework; among the important implications here was the

A Review of Development Strategies and Programmes of the People's Revolutionary Government in Grenada, 1979-83

In 1979 a People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) under Prime Minister Maurice Bishop assumed power in Grenada and undertook the first experiment with socialism in the Commonwealth Caribbean. A key component of this experiment was its strategy for development, to which end bold initiatives were employed to address a range of social issues and to revitalize and reform a stagnant economy. During its tenure of four and a half years the PRG had achievements on a variety of fronts, such that in 1982 the World Bank endorsed its policies and forecast further advancement. However, with the tragic demise of Bishop's government in October 1983, came the termination of the experiment prior to its completion and before the results could be fully analysed. Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that other small and poor Third World nations might benefit from the lessons provided by the PRG's dedicated experiment in development.

The people's commentator: calypso and the Grenada revolution

Cecil Belfon, The Flying Turkey, is the most celebrated calypsonian in Grenada. He is also a soldier in the People's Revolutionary Army. As he says: 'In the context of our society now, I have been able to combine the two functions, soldier and calypsonian, because the objectives of both roles have come together and make one and the same thing. ' Belfon was a bank clerk in the Royal Bank of Canada until 13 March 1979, the morning of the Grenada Revolution. When he heard of the uprising, he left his bank counter and immediately went to help defend the radio station, which the revolutionaries had stormed and taken. He has been a soldier ever since then. His songs and records, in particular 'Innocent Blood' (written short ly after the June 1980 bomb attack on the leadership of the People's Revolutionary Government at a public rally, causing the death of three teenage girls), are very popular in Grenada, and show the clear and dynamic link between calypso and the revolutionary movement in the Caribbean. Belfon is now Manager of Television Free Grenada.

Grenada: no room for dissent?: State control of the media is essential to the national interest

An account of the Grenada People's Revolutionary Government's increasing control of the media

Majority Images-Minority Realities: A Perspective on Anti-Orientalism in the United States

The final American withdrawal from Vietnam and the collapse of our client regime in Saigon marked a nodal point in American relations with East Asia. For years prior to our terminal disengagement, hawkish politicians and publicists had waxed eloquent about the bloodbath that was sure to occur when the northerners and their allies of the People's Revolutionary Government had achieved their victory. Although that sanguinary catastrophe did not occur, the presumption that it could have caused the American government to implement and execute a refugee program that brought over 125,000 Vietnamese to the United States. While it is far too early to draw up any detailed balance sheet on that refugee program, the reactions that it triggered in the United States provide a useful and convenient point of departure for a retrospective analysis of changing American attitudes toward all immigrants from Asia.