Maurice Bishop & Chris Searle 1981 Grenada: Education is a Must
The history of Grenada, the southernmost of the Windward Islands in the Eastern Caribbean, and comprising the three sister islands of Grenada, Carriacou and Petit Martinique with their 110,000 people, has always been characterised by resistance. Edward Brathwaite, the Barbadian poet, has identified this resistance with the 'maroon' mentality of the people, and an unquenchable desire for freedom. Indeed, when the first French colonialists tried to subjugate the Carib Amerindians as far back as 1650, they were met with constant military harassment and guerrilla warfare.
In the same year a company of Carib warriors preferred to throw them- selves off a cliff at the extreme northern end of the island, at a place subsequently called Sauteurs ('Leapers'), having fought with the sea at their backs right down from the highest misty ridge of the island, rather than surrender to those who came to steal their land. And the Carib war cry of 'Kaori Homan!' (To arms!) found its echo right through the persistent slave revolts of the colonial period to the French words on the flag of the rebel Fédon in 1796 - 'Freedom or death!', to the slogan of the People's Revolutionary Government which toppled the discredited tyrant Eric Gairy on March 13th, 1979: 'Forward Ever, Backward Never!'
Grenada, like many of the islands of the Eastern Caribbean, passed backwards and forwards between the British and French colonial powers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, depending on which one happened to be the temporary 'victor' in the chauvinist wars between them. Whoever became the master, the Grenadian slaves remained untamed and rebellious. The French historian, Labat, wrote in 1742:
"As a rule, the slaves were allowed Saturday on which to work for themselves and provide for their families. But on the five days of the working week the overseers got every ounce of work out of them, beat them without mercy for the least fault, and appear to care far less for the life of a negro then for a horse.
The least disobedience is punished severely, and still more so are the slave risings. Despite these punishments, however, these occur frequently, for the poor wretches pushed to extremes more often by their drunken, ignorant and cruel overseers than by their masters, at last lose patience. They will throw themselves upon the man who has ill-used them and tear him to pieces, and although they are certain to receive terrible punishment they rejoice that they took vengeance on those pitiless brutes. On these occasions the English take up arms and there are massacres. The slaves who are captured are sent to prison and condemned to be passed through the cane mill, or be burnt alive, or be put into iron cages that prevent any movement and in which they are hung up to branches of trees and left to die of hunger and despair. The English call this torture 'Putting a man to dry."[1]
Such treatment had its logical consequences. In 1796, Julien Fédon, a free planter of mixed race, responding both to the clamour for freedom of the Grenadian slaves and the organised revolutionary ideas blowing in the victories of the French masses and carried into the Caribbean basin by Victor Hughues and the huge revolutionary upsurge in Haiti, established his freedom camp in the high peaks of central Grenada, having captured the towns of Grenville and Gouyave, on either side of the island. The rebels held out stubbornly for nearly two years against the British, and were in control of almost all the island except St. George's, the capital, and Calivigny in the south. The rebellion was eventually suppressed, but only with the British having to call upon the Spanish Governor of Trinidad for military aid. Fédon was never captured, and his spirit of liberty, elusive to all tyranny, still blows from its source in Grenada, right across the Caribbean.
That same spirit inspired two of Grenada's greatest sons, T. Albert Marryshow and Tubal Uriah 'Buzz' Butler, who have now, since the Revolution, received overdue recognition in the land of their birth. Marryshow was born in Grenada in 1877 and at the age of nineteen became a journalist. In 1915 he founded The West Indian (the direct ancestor of the present national newspaper of Grenada, The Free West Indian), which devoted itself to advancing the lives of the people of Grenada, but which also upheld a strong regional policy and sought to lay the base for eventual Caribbean federation and unity. In 1921 he visited London to singlehandedly campaign for greater representation of Caribbean peoples, and secured some notable concessions. He lived to see the West Indian Federation inaugurated in 1958 and became one of its first senators, but died in the same year. Perhaps his most inspiring achievement however, is his Cycles of Civilisation, written in 1917 as a reply to a speech made in London by the South African general and politician, J.C. Smuts, one of the early architects of South African racism, which led directly to Apartheid. In this mightily prophetic piece of writing, Marryshow, citizen o fGrenada, of the Caribbean and of the world, anticipated the freedom of his own people in Grenada and all people of African ancestry:
"Africa! It is Africa's direct turn. Sons of New Ethiopia scattered all over the world, should determine that there should be new systems of the distribution of opportunities, privileges and rights, so that Africa shall rid herself of many of the murderous high waymen of Europe who have plundered her, raped her and left her hungry and naked in the broad light of the boasted European civilisation. Africa would then be free again to raise her head among the races of the Earth and enrich humanity as she has done before...a giant spirit of Democracy and Socialism is coming to do God's work of 'levelling up and levelling down'."[2]
Tubal Uriah 'Buzz' Butler, like many of his day, left Grenada as an unemployed worker, to find work in Trinidad. He arrived in Port of Spain in 1921 and worked in turn as a pipe fitter, ringman, pumpman and production worker in Trinidad's burgeoning oil industry. He became a trusted leader of the oil workers and an early militant of the Oil Workers' Trade Union, in 1936 led a strike at the Apex oilfields, followed by a hunger march to Port of Spain. Such relentless activity caused his expulsion from the Trinidad Labour Party, and he formed the 'British Empire and Citizens Home Rule Party'. In 1937, after a mass meeting which he had addressed in Fyzabad with his electric oratory, all the oil workers in southern Trinidad walked out of their jobs to protest at fellow workers suffering the consequences of being turned out of their homes so that the land could be used fox further drilling. When the police made a clumsy effort to arrest Butler there was a violent reaction from the oil workers, and only the arrival of British warships in Port of Spain harbour finally quelled their anger. Two policemen lay dead. Butler escaped to Venezuela, and on his eventual return to Trinidad was arrested and sentenced to a two year prison sentence. He fought on and made a successful appeal. Even after six years of internment from 1939 to 1945, Butler still retained his rebellious spirit, and continued his activism well into the post war years. He died obscurely in Trinidad just four years before the Revolution in the land of his birth recognised him as a great figure in their revolutionary tradition.
Even Eric Matthew Gairy rose to power on the shoulders of the popular resistance of the Grenadian people. In 1950 he formed the Grenada Mental and Manual Workers' Union, intending to channel the grievances of the agricultural workers along his own egocentric direction.[3] When the colonial authorities refused to recognise 'his' union, he called a general strike which provoked the 'sky red' incidents of arson and sabotage aimed at estate owners and wealthy businessmen in the island. On February 21st, Gairy was arrested and removed to detention in Carriacou after leading a demonstration of striking workers through the streets of St. George's. As a result of this colonial intimidation the violence of resistance increased, and did not abate until Gairy was released with the union recognised, and 'the leader' had appealed and threatened at a public meeting and over the radio for his supporters to cease their violence.
It is clear that at this time, Gairy's influence and popularity with the agricultural workers were at their zenith. 'We will never let the leader fall, for we love him the best of all!' declared his supporters. So what happened to cause such a massive and complete reversal in the attitude of the Grenadian people towards him, whereby ten years later he was widely equated with the Devil? Apart from studying the facts of the twenty five years of Gairy's power, (between 1951 and 1979, excluding one period between 1957 - 61 when Herbert Blaize's Grenada National Party formed the Government), and the history of corruption, fraud, mismanagement, violence, wastage and oppression which characterized them, to understand his motivations and how he could have inveigled and buttressed himself inside the favours of the people, we can turn to one of the great novels of the Caribbean, George Lamming's In the Castle of my Skin. It was published in 1953, two years after Gairy's rise to power in Grenada. The novel, amongst many other things, tells the story of an ambitious Labour politician called Slime, who after leading his people into social revolt and strikes with promises of a better life, betrays them by wholesale corruption and fraud and uses his influence to spurn the trust of the people, embezzle their hard-earned money and build up a vast personal aggrandizement and fortune. Although it was written by a Barbadian to reflect events there in the 1930's, In the Castle of my Skin has proved to be a prophetic book for Grenada, and its acclaimed author one of the 1979 Revolution's earliest and firmest supporters.
Gairy always claimed to be the voice of the agricultural workers, opposed to the landowners and businessmen of Grenada, who in general lined up behind the Grenada National Party. However, it soon became clear that he was representing and working for nobody outside of himself and a cabal of obsequious minions who likewise benefitted from his 'squande mania' and favouritism. The effect of his corruption soon became evident: a large slice of the private sector gradually fell to his ownership or to the ownership of his 'front' men and women, including several hotels. Businessmen were kept in line with favours of government contracts, government supplies and materials disappeared to unknown destinations overnight, and his own luxurious residence at Mount Royal appeared over the hills which crest St. George's, as if to keep worried vigil over the growing resistance in the city below. Despite his ardent protestations of Christianity, the 'leader' played upon the superstitious fears of some elements in the society, keeping alive the backward tradition of 'obeah' in the manner of his tyrannical twin, the dictator Duvalier of Haiti.
Women became particular victims of his misrule. Rewards were given for sexual favours, whether they were positions of employment or scholarships abroad. His hotels became thinly disguised brothels, with a gaudy veneer which scarcely hid their true function. The 'Evening Palace' now transformed into a government hotel, was particularly notorious. Young women would be called for by government vehicles and transported there for the pleasure of Gairy's placemen. A group of student teachers, writing in December 1980, wrote this poem remembering the 'Palace':
TRANSFORMING THE EVENING PALACE
Peep, Peep, the feeder road van -
Is Margaret home? Yes, get dressed. /
Vrooom! Off we go,
Evening Palace we go girls!
Gentlemen, we have gathered for a treat,
Girls galore, all beautiful and inviting,
Drinks to the fill,
Laughter, high-pitched and base.
Couples, glasses in hand -
It's fun and enjoyment in this clan.
Inside it's cool,
All poshly dressed, the corners and walls,
Flowers, dim lights, a romantic scene.
Soft music, everything is set
The tempo is building for the great step.
The crowd grows thin, doors open and shut,
To the Scarlet and Gold Rooms, they disappear.
On taxpayers' expense they fete away
While poor workers beg for more pay.
Poor sisters, heads bowed, walk in shame -
To seek a job should I stoop so low?
Some day this will surely end, I'm sure!
It came at last with a sudden bang;
No more Scarlet and Gold Rooms,
We do not have to climb the van.
Evening Palace for me
With no more shame,
There I can dine and sing and shout,
It's free for all who have the money to pay.
The boss and his men
Were only sex bombers,
Immorality and pleasures were all they were after.
Today they are no more because of the overthrow.
Evening Palace we have changed you, we have transformed you!
No more an institution of corruption,
But a place of quiet rest and good intention.[4]
Such activity accompanied twenty years of public neglect. Medical and hospital facilities declined until there were literally no aspirins for patients or bed sheets for the hospitalised. The roads became infamous and grotesque; full of ruts, holes and devoid of any driving surface. School walls fell down, the furniture broke up. The fees to help support the University of the West Indies were diverted into the corridors of corruption, and thus Grenadians lost the opportunity of subsidised study at their regional university. Alongside this galloping dismemberment of public facilities and infrastructures, 'Hurricane Gairy' brought with it a developing form of social and political violence which gradually edged towards fascism.
Inspiration arising from the Black Power demonstrations of Trinidad in 1970, caused three hundred young Grenadians to take to the streets soon after with slogans of 'More Jobs Now!' Amongst the organisers of this protest action were some of the radicals who were later to form the leadership of the New Jewel Movement. Gairy's response was to set in motion an Emergency Powers Act which gave him wide powers of arrest and suppression. In addition, he made a broadcast which openly intimidated any opponents, publicly announcing that he was doubling the strength of the police force and welcoming criminal elements into its ranks - 'some of the roughest and toughest roughnecks.' These men became the nucleus of his fascist squad, the 'Mongoose Gang', who owed personal loyalty to Gairy alone and who terrorised any effective oppositional movement. This fascist outgrowth manifested a more openly political form when Gairy turned to Chile in October 1977, both for arms supplies and for the training of his officers. When the revolutionaries burned down Gairy's main military establishment at Trueblue on March 13th, 1979, they found documents from the Chilean government advising on the most effective methods of torturing prisoners.
All these dimensions of the Gairy years of power became unified in the term 'Gairyism', and it was against this 'Gairyism' that radical oppositional elements united to form the New Jewel Movement in March 1973. Up to that point in time various groupings had emerged, both urban and rural. In St. George's, professionals who had returned from tertiary education overseas, and who had also experienced racism and the struggle against it, like lawyers Maurice Bishop and Kenrick Radix, came together in determined opposition to the deformities of Gairyism. 'FORUM' grew from the Black Power demonstrations in the city and the protests of nurses against their appalling salaries and conditions in December, 1970. This grouping took on a more actional character with regard to social research and awareness and political education when it developed into the Movement for the Advancement of Community Effort, (M.A.C.E.). This in turn developed into The Movement for Assemblies of the People, (M.A.P.), which began to view itself more like a political party, with objectives of eventually seeking governmental power. Simultaneously in the countryside, another movement, the Joint Endeavour for the Welfare, Education and Liberation of the People, (J.E.W.E.L.), was developing in St. David's, a strongly agricultural parish and the only parish in Grenada that is without an urban centre. This was led by Unison Whiteman, and directly challenged Gairy's proclaimed power base, the agricultural workers, by exposing the gulf between his rhetoric and actual deeds, and forming rural co-operatives which gave concrete pointers to an alternative way forward for the countryside.
The last weeks of 1972 provided an incident which pushed the synthesis of these groups forward.[5] At La Sagesse in St. David's, an English estate owner, Lord Brownlow, who had purchased the land through Gairy's help, cut off access to the local beach using Gairy's police to enforce the closure. Eight hundred people came o-it to demonstrate against this arrogance, a 'People's Trial' was held and Lord Brownlow was condemned as unworthy to own land in Grenada. On January 26th, 1973, a large group of determined protesters, unthwarted by Gairy's armed police, reopened the beach to the Grenadian public. Two months later, in March 1973, M.A.P. and J.E.W.E.L. combined to form the New Jewel Movement. Almost at once they were involved in another mass campaign. The next month a youth, Jeremiah Richardson, was coldly gunned down on the pavement in Grenville by one of Gairy's police. The N.J.M. quickly mobilised five thousand people and marched on Grenville Police Station. The police fled in terror. The demonstrators then moved on Pearls International Airport which is to the north of Grenville, and brought international attention to the plight of Grenadians by closing it down for three days.
The N.J.M.'s influence and support grew throughout 1973, and by November of that year they were attracting ten thousand people from all over the country at a 'People's Congress' held near Grenville, at Seamoon Stadium. The large assembly demanded Gairy's resignation from office and threatened a general strike if he refused to go. This was too much for the 'leader', and on November 18th he sent the Mongoose Gang to attack the N.J.M. leadership, who had gone again to Grenville to hold discussions about forming a front against Gairy with members of the business community there. As the leadership was conferring in the residence of H. M. Bhola, a Grenville shopkeeper, Inspector Innocent Belmar, who was in charge of the hoodlums, advised Bhola to throw out the N.J.M. or he would burn the house down. As the six N. J. M. leaders emerged from the house they were set upon and badly beaten. Bishop, Whiteman, Radix, Selwyn Strachan (now Minister of Communications and Public Works), Hudson Austin (now General of the People's Revolutionary Army) and Selwyn Daniel were coshed and battered with staves and truncheons, thrown into a common cell six feet by four and shaven with broken bottles after their heads had been flushed down police toilets. The wounded men had to be systematically guarded in hospital while they recovered to prevent more murder attempts by Gairy's thugs. One such N. J. M. supporter who acted as a guard in the hospital while his comrades were lying wounded was Harold Strachan, a taxi driver of Boca village. On December 27th, Strachan was shot by 'Willie', a particularly notorious mongooseman. He was not killed by the bullet however, but by assassins who entered the hospital and removed the oxygen life-support system which was enabling him to stay alive. The grim details of the beatings and other thuggery were later publicly revealed by the Duffus Commission of Enquiry, composed of international jurists, which Gairy reluctantly allowed after the Chamber of Commerce and the Roman Catholic Church, among other bodies, had demanded an investigation into the events of what became known as 'Bloody Sunday'.
The repression against the strike which followed in January 1974, spearheaded by the Dockworkers' Union, reached its ugly culmination on January 21st. Gairy sent his Mongoose Gang and his 'Green Beasts' to break up a gathering of demonstrators outside Otway House on the Carenage, facing the inner harbour of St. George's. Women and school children present at the demonstration ran for sanctuary inside the building. As Gairy's thugs forced an entry, Rupert Bishop, a small businessman and father of Maurice, blocked the doorway to attempt to explain that the room was filled with school children and their mothers. He was shot and killed at point-blank range.
This, and other brutal and cowardly acts - such as the slaying of Alister Strachan, who had been attending an N. J. M. meeting on June 19th 1977 in St. George's Market Square, and who was pursued by the police after the meeting was attacked, and shot down as he dived over the sea wall and tried to swim to safety - persuaded the Grenadian people that they were not simply dealing with one corrupt leader, but an emerging fascist state. The N.J.M., despite the fact that it became the parliamentary opposition in 1976 - even in the face of massive electoral fraud and malpractice - was banned from using microphones at public meetings and had its newspaper and literature suppressed. N. J. M. parliamentary members such as Whiteman, were forcibly moved from the House when they presumed in debates to openly criticise Garry. Extra-parliamentary struggle, clearly, was crucial. In June 1978 the teachers took industrial action in the form of a 'Sick-out', and in the same year a major struggle developed for recognition of the newly-formed Bank and General Workers' Union. This was led by an N. J. M. militant, Vincent Noel. At a poll the union had the support of ninety per cent of the bank workers, but Gairy refused to accept it and demanded another poll. The second poll gave an equally strong mandate to the B. and G.W.U., and Gairy was forced to simply order the manager of Barclay's Bank not to recognize the union.
By March 1979 it was clear that Gairy's toleration of the N. J. M. had become exhausted. On March 12th, he left Grenada without stating his destination, leaving orders for the arrest and assassination of the N. J. M. leadership. Some remaining honest elements within the police informed them of Gairy's intentions. That same evening the decision was reached democratically to launch an insurrection at 4.00 a.m. on the next morning, March 13th. Forty-six armed men stormed the Trueblue barracks and overpowered the unprepared soldiers. With the weapons that Gairy had received from the fascist government of Chile, the revolutionaries proceeded to the Radio Station at Morne Rouge, which was soon captured. At six o'clock, news of the successful assault was broadcast by the victorious militants, and orders were given to police stations all over the nation to run up white flags. The people were invited to demonstrate their support for the end of Gairy by taking to the streets. The popular nature of the Revolution was soon apparent after the population had recovered from the surprise of the news. What the revolutionaries had begun at Trueblue and Morne Rouge, the people grasped onto and finished. All over the country, people young and old, came out with cutlasses, knives and any weapon they could find to guarantee the successful consolidation of the morning's revolutionary work. Almost every Grenadian has got a story to tell of that day, and there was not simply joy and relief. Many young men and women immediately took up arms to patrol the beaches all round the islands, showing their vigilance to the threat of any mercenary attack. The knew that if a corrupt and vicious era was really to end, they had to make sure that it would never return, Here two youths, one from St. George's and one from the sister island of Carriacou, recount their experiences and involvement in that day:
"I was standing at a bus stop in St. George's that morning, waiting to catch a bus to the Vocational Institute, where I was studying. I had a pile of books and papers under my arm. A car came up the street from the direction of Grand Anse, near the radio station, and a man I knew was screaming out of the window that Gairy's days were finished and that Trueblue and the radio station had been taken over. Something came over me. I dropped my books in the drain by the road and rushed up the street, shouting. I stopped a car going up by Grand Anse, and when I got there I ran all the way to join the comrades at the radio station. I joined the P .R. A. (People's Revolutionary Anny) after that. I sometimes wonder what happened to my books. Sometimes I think they must still be lying in the drain by the bus stop."
"It was about 7.00 a.m. We were listening to the radio, all our family. Grenada radio station was a dull, boring station, full of Gairy's lies, so we never listened to it, we listened to Radio St. Vincent or Radio Antilles station. Then, by accident, my little brother was playing and he knocked the radio dial and it came onto Radio Granada. Suddenly we heard Bulletin number five: 'Officers and leaders of the Army await the naming of the new Prime Minister.'
"We were so happy. | ran out into the street and found that everybody was jumping and shouting. I got an old white sheet and painted on it, 'DAWN OF THE REVOLUTION'. Then I thought that wasn't good because the Revolution had already started, so how could it be the dawn? Then somebody said, 'No, this is just the first day of the Revolution, so it must be the dawn - you can call it a dawn!'.
"Then we all went down the street and people were dancing and drinking. But some of us collected any guns that people had and went down to town, to the police station. We made the police there fly a white flag and give up all their guns. Then we were very happy, and tore up some police uniforms when the police gave up."
Notes
[1] Quoted in Raymond P. Devas: A History of the Island of Grenada, 1498-1796, Carenage Press, St. George's, 1974, p. 75.
[2] T. Albert Marryshow: Cycles of Civilization, Pathway Publishers, Barbadoes, 1974, p. 4.
[3] Much of this, and other information in this commentary, was gleaned from: W. Richard Jacobs and Ian Jacobs: Grenada: The Route to Revolution, Casa de las Americas, Havana, 1979, and Francis J. Bain: Beyond the Ballot Box, Grenada Publishers Ltd., 1980
[4] Poem written co-operatively by trainee teachers, Randolph Thomas, Leslie-Ann St. Louis, Jean Swan, Trevor Hutchinson, Dale Barry and Clifford McIntyre.
[5] A more detailed account of this, and other incidents in the development of the New Jewel Movement is to be found in: Grenada: Let Those Who Labour Hold the Reins, An interview with Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard, Liberation Books, London 1980.