The Grenada Revolution

Reflections and Lessons

Wendy C. Grenade

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781626743458
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Lateinamerikanische & karibische Geschichte

Grenada experienced much turmoil in the 1970s and 1980s, culminating in an armed Marxist revolution, a bloody military coup, and finally in 1983 Operation Urgent Fury, a United States-led invasion. Wendy C. Grenade combines various perspectives to tell a Caribbean story about this revolution, weaving together historical accounts of slain Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, the New Jewel Leftist Movement, and contemporary analysis. There is much controversy. Though the Organization of American States formally requested intervention from President Ronald Reagan, world media coverage was largely negative and skeptical, if not baffled, by the action, which resulted in a rapid defeat and the deposition of the Revolutionary Military Council.

By examining the possibilities and contradictions of the Grenada Revolution, the contributors draw upon thirty years' of hindsight to illuminate a crucial period of the Cold War. Beyond geopolitics, the book interrogates but transcends the nuances and peculiarities of Grenada's political history to situate this revolution in its larger Caribbean and global context. In doing so, contributors seek to unsettle old debates while providing fresh understandings about a critical period in the Caribbean's postcolonial experience. This collection throws into sharp focus the centrality of the Grenada Revolution, offering a timely contribution to Caribbean scholarship and to wider understanding of politics in small developing, postcolonial societies.

1. Introduction

Wendy C. Grenade

Thirty years after the collapse of the Grenada Revolution and the U.S. invasion of Grenada, a confluence of forces has ushered in a complex world. The Grenada Revolution: Reflections and Lessons uses the benefit of thirty years’ hindsight to reflect on and critique the Grenada Revolution. The principal aim of the book is to use the Grenada Revolution as the point of departure to revisit a critical period in the postcolonial Caribbean experience to glean lessons for contemporary Caribbean politics and society. A central question is: Why did the Grenada Revolution lose its way, and what is its legacy? Perhaps more important, what are the lessons from the Grenada experience for democratic transformation in the twenty-first century?

Why the Grenada Revolution?

On March 13, 1979, during the Cold War, the New Jewel Movement (NJM) led by Maurice Bishop seized power from Eric Gairy’s dictatorship in what was the making of the Grenada Revolution (1979–83). This period marked a “crucial turning point in the history and character of the Caribbean” (Lewis 1987, 1). Grenada was the first in the Anglophone Caribbean to experience a successful “Golpe” (coup), breaking for the first time the tradition of West Indian constitutionalism; the first where its prime minister was assassinated; and the first to be invaded by the United States (Lewis 1987, 2). Those events placed Grenada at the center of Cold War machinations. Fundamentally, the Grenada Revolution was an attempt to break with the past and create new pathways for economic and social transformation. The revolutionary experiment in Grenada was not an isolated event but part of a larger struggle throughout the Third World for self-determination and social justice.

An extensive body of work on the Grenada Revolution, its demise, and the subsequent U.S. invasion has been written by academics, journalists, government officials, political activists, think tank experts, and others (Lewis 1987, ix); and with this, a wide range of views has emerged on the revolution’s significance. One strand in the literature locates the revolution within the Cold War conjuncture. A dominant view on the right argues that the revolution “was designed to create a Communist society and to bring Grenada into the Soviet orbit” (Ledeen and Romerstein 1984, 3). It is argued that U.S. “president Reagan felt ‘that America was being kicked around as it had been when Carter was in charge,’ and that if he could not react in Beirut, in Grenada ‘he bloody well could react—and would’” (Payne, Sutton, and Thorndike 1984, 150–51; cited in Morales 1994, 80). A second view, from the left, locates the Grenada affair with the anti-imperialist struggle and the Caribbean radical tradition. Rupert Lewis observes:

Grenada is the beginning of the end of the Caribbean radicalism that really begins with the late 1960s, rises to a high point in 1970 in Trinidad, and then with the Manley period in Jamaica, and develops in most of the islands as critical groupings and organizational activities and which, from a regional point of view, has a sense of itself as having a common agenda for change, with different groups having different ideological positions, but being all part of a movement for change in the sixties and seventies. That ends quite definitively in Grenada in 1983. (Lewis, quoted in Scott 2001, 158)

In the aftermath of the crisis, several scholars and other observers turned their gaze on Grenada, seeking to understand the events of October 1983, given its geopolitical significance (Boodhoo 1984; Payne, Sutton, and Thorndike 1984; Thorndike 1985; Pastor 1986; Lewis 1987). However, these earlier works focused on the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Grenada Revolution and the U.S. invasion. With the end of the Cold War, interest in Grenada subsided.

With the passage of time, there is need for fresh analyses. Recently there has been a rekindling of scholarly interest in the “Grenada affair” (Meeks 2001; Scott 2007; Collins 2003; Puri 2010).¹ The contributions in this book seek to add to the discourse. The book builds on a conversation that began at the 33rd Annual Caribbean Studies Association Conference in San Andres, Colombia, in May 2008 on the panel “Transcending Silence: Revisiting Grenada Twenty-five Years Later.” It further elaborates on a previous publication, “Grenada Revolution (30) Years After,” a special issue of the Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies (September–December 2010), in which several of the chapters in this book were presented as preliminary reflections that have since been significantly advanced for the current work.

Purpose and Structure of the Book

The implosion of the Grenada Revolution and the subsequent U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983 occurred at a critical juncture in world affairs. The Cold War was coming to an end, and a new world economic order was dawning. The convergence of those events and forces exacerbated old problems and brought to the fore new, complex issues for the small developing states of the Commonwealth Caribbean. This book combines various perspectives to tell a Caribbean story that weaves together historical and contemporary analyses to draw lessons for the present and future. By examining the possibilities and contradictions of the Grenada Revolution, the contributors use thirty years’ hindsight to illuminate a crucial period of the Cold War in a new dispensation. The book seeks to unsettle old debates while providing fresh understandings about a critical period in the Caribbean’s postcolonial experience. It throws into sharp focus the centrality of the Grenada Revolution and offers a timely collection of articles as a contribution to Caribbean scholarship and praxis.

Part I: Historicizing Grenada

Following this introduction, part 1 lays the historical foundation for the book. In chapter 2, Curtis Jacobs constructs a broad framework that weaves together global events, regional developments, and Grenada’s particularities. Jacobs discusses the rise and eventual fall of Eric Gairy, the rise of Maurice Bishop, and the historical currents that led to the making of the Grenada Revolution on March 13, 1979. Jacobs contends that as Gairy’s political challenges mounted, and as his authoritarian tendencies became more apparent, he reintroduced violence as a necessary prerequisite for the conduct of politics. For Jacobs, Gairy opened the door to his being toppled from office by the very methods that he used to maintain his rule.

In chapter 3, Kari Grenade provides a socioeconomic overview of Grenada from 1960 to 2012, with specific focus on economic performance in the era of the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) of 1979 to 1983. Grenade reviews the economic environment during the Gairy era, specifically 1960 to 1978, and discusses the different approaches to economic development pursued by Gairy and by the PRG. Grenade then delves into several aspects of development planning and policy, as well as the performance of the four key economic sectors (real, fiscal, monetary, and external) from 1979 to 1983. The chapter then provides a brief socioeconomic overview of Grenada (focusing primarily on economic growth performance) since the collapse of the Grenada Revolution through the end of 2012.

Part II: Insiders’ Perspectives on the Grenada Revolution

In part 2 the contributors provide a retrospective gaze on the Grenada Revolution. Chapter 4 reproduces an interview I conducted with Bernard Coard at the Richmond Hill Prison, Grenada, on October 17, 2008, before his release in September 2009. Bernard Coard was the deputy prime minister in the PRG and was imprisoned for twenty-six years, charged, along with others, for the murder of Maurice Bishop, Fitzroy Bain, Norris Bain, Evelyn Bullen, Jacqueline Creft, Keith Hayling, Evelyn Maitland, Unison Whiteman, and others on October 19, 1983. Coard’s interview has deliberately been placed at the beginning of this part of the book, given the critical role he played in the making and collapse of the Grenada Revolution. Coard locates the Grenada Revolution within the context of “the many revolutionary upsurges of the Grenadian people over centuries.” Coard centers the anti-Gairy struggle in Grenada within the larger anti-imperialist and antidictatorial struggles of the Caribbean Left. Coard reflects on the highs and lows of the Grenada Revolution and admits that the revolutionaries made many grave errors.

After the release on September 5, 2009, of Coard and the six remaining prisoners convicted of the murder of Maurice Bishop and others, there has been cause for a flurry of new conferences, papers, letters, and communiqués on the Grenada Revolution and its tragic demise. In chapter 5 Brian Meeks revisits the 1983 crisis and collapse of the Grenada Revolution. As one of the many regional workers in the revolution, Meeks sets out to rethink and restate his knowledge of events “for a new generation and a completely different world.” Meeks tackles some of what he considers to be flaws in the new round of debates on the crisis and collapse of the Grenada Revolution and offers alternative explanations. He concludes that the story is yet to be fully told.

In fact, the story of the Grenada Revolution and its demise is a tapestry of narratives, where the truth is still elusive. In chapter 6, Patsy Lewis, a Grenadian who was an active supporter of the Grenada Revolution, presents a narrative account of the tragic events of October 19, 1983. Lewis seeks to recount the events of the day through the eyes of a junior member of the NJM who had been summoned to Fort Rupert (now Fort George) along with other members of the NJM. The narrative is based on an actual interview with a young woman in her mid-twenties a year after the tragedy. The piece is written from the perspective of the interviewee but shifts in the last paragraph to the perspective of the interviewer, who provides the reader with some insight into her responses to the interview. This chapter takes the reader back to the moment when both sides squared off in the final hours before the implosion of the Grenada Revolution.

Part III: Theoretical Critiques of the Grenada Revolution and Lessons for the Future

Part 3 provides theoretical critiques of the Grenada Revolution and lessons for the future. In chapter 7, Hilbourne Watson argues that the Grenada Revolution did not meet the requirements for a social revolution with a working-class character. He contends that Grenada, like most other Caribbean societies, simply lacked the foundation—material and otherwise—to build socialism, as there did not exist the deep inner structures of capital in science, technology, industry, finance, production, and labor to achieve and sustain a social revolution. For Watson, the crisis and collapse of the Grenada Revolution and the roles played by the Grenada revolutionaries had a great deal to do with an inherited authoritarian political culture.

Tennyson Joseph discusses C. L. R. James and the Grenada Revolution in chapter 8. He argues that many of the theoretical assumptions and tactical approaches of the Grenada Revolution were rooted in the experiences of early twentieth-century Russia. Joseph contends that the internal tensions within the Grenada Revolution largely ignored the pre- and post-Stalin theoretical debates within Communism and reflected little awareness of original Caribbean Marxist thought. Joseph argues that this was manifested in the limited impact of the Caribbean’s foremost Marxist theoretician, C. L. R. James, on the revolutionary process in Grenada, although James’s theoretical contributions addressed concerns that bore direct relevance to the later implosion of the Grenada Revolution and to a post-Stalinist global Marxism. Joseph seizes the opportunity provided by James’s critique of the Grenada Revolution to widen the critique of James’s thought by engaging in a wider analysis of the utility and relevance of James’s key theoretical and methodological assumptions and approaches to the politics of the early twenty-first century, to identify what remains useful and what requires further formulation.

In chapter 9, Horace Campbell discusses the challenges for revolutionary change in the Caribbean. Similar to Joseph, Campbell examines the new revolutionary place in the twenty-first century as popular forms of expressions are breaking out as peoples develop new techniques at self-organization and mobilization. Campbell focuses on the lessons from the Haitian, Cuban, Rastafarian, and Grenadian revolutions and counterrevolutions to conceptualize revolutionary change for the next thirty years. He zeros in on the Zapatistas and the Bolivarian revolution, the women’s movement, the antiracist movement, and the environmental justice movement to enrich struggles for change beyond the single-issue struggles that have in the past influenced political mobilization.

Part IV: The Caribbean Left, Party Politics, and Political Party Transitions in Grenada

Part 4 focuses on the implications of the demise of the Grenada Revolution for the Caribbean Left and for party politics in Grenada. In chapter 10, David Hinds offers an analysis of the Grenada Revolution and the Caribbean Left, using the case of Guyana’s Working People’s Alliance (WPA). Hinds contends that the politics of most Caribbean Left parties were influenced by the experience of the Grenada Revolution and its ultimate demise. The chapter looks at the relationship between the NJM and WPA before and during the revolution, including the impact of the revolution on the WPA’s fight against the Forbes Burnham–led People’s National Congress (PNC) dictatorship in Guyana. Finally it draws a connection between the demise of the revolution in October 1983 and the shift in the WPA’s tactics and strategy in the period after the demise.

In chapter 11, I trace the twists and turns of party politics in Grenada from 1984 to 2013. I discuss the construction of the new political architecture and its subsequent splintering, the emergence of an unstable multiparty system, the thirteen-year dominance of the Keith Mitchell–led New National Party (NNP) (1995–2008), and intraparty splintering and the breakdown of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) (2008–13). I argue that although Grenada has transitioned to formal electoral democracy, there exists today an unsettled “settling” to the two-party system. I argue, however, that Grenada has a collective resilient impulse that promotes stability in the midst of volatility.

Chapter 12 reproduces a speech by Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, on the occasion of the naming of the Maurice Bishop International Airport (MBIA) in Grenada in May 2009. Gonsalves argues that the spirit and ideas of Maurice Bishop were alive and flourishing among the people of Grenada and the Caribbean. He applauded the naming of the airport as an act of the Grenadian people coming home to themselves out of their agon...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Contributors
• Credits
• Index