IN MARCH 1979 the New Jewel Movement, led by Maurice Bishop, overthrew the dictatorship of Eric Gairy in Grenada. On 19 October 1983, Maurice Bishop_ murdered on the orders of Bernard Coard, the Grenadan minister of finance and deputy prime minister. On 23 October 1983, marines and army rangers invaded installing a new puppet government.
The four and a half years that lay between these events saw a fundamental reshaping of polities in the Caribbean, and had a tremendous impact throughout the world.
That impact was not simply or primarily the bloodiness or cynicism of the final American intervention, or the catastrophe for the Grenadan revolution represented by the Bishop murder Vot even the fevered Ronald Reagan could credibly claim that an island of 110,000 people - the majority agricultural workers threat to the military power of the U'nited States. The impact lay in the superb policies pursued by the Bishop government, the results they achieved.
speech reprinted Maurice Bishop called Grenada 'a new socio-economic development model'. More plainly put, it was a vast exercise in democratic socialism most important that has taken place in the world.
For Bishop, socialist development had two inextricably linked features: economic and social development, ana the democratisation of politics and of society.
In the economic and social field, the achievements of the Bishop ment were enormous. Few history have more directly applied the truth that, for a revolution to count for anything, evervaay lives of ordinary U'nemployment was reduced. universal literacy gramme was begun.
Education expanded. was introuuccu• Agriculture diversified.
These Weic side issues, 'purely economic' yucsuuus.
were the core of the social policies pursued by the Bishop government, which brought SunlilcIse benefits Grenadan people.
The effect of the American invasion was immediate, open and brutal. Since then unemployment has more has urerduall specialised was the needs of the Grenadan people.
government's American ceonunuic and social, Maurice Bishop socialism that Europe Revolution in 1917.
The Grenadan Is propic — self-organisation use to organise temselves. organisation imagination of unionists, of women, wasune state. • Was d the support, Maurice Bishop said -tremendous people. The There, take that same 'risk' with ease.
the people of Grenada.
• one or le Bernard Coard Bishop, was to disarm the people.
crucial question for socialism governstates in class holds state power.
deeply touch the people. the proletariat in its true sense signiticantly pro- mous expansion Free health care socialist not They the reasons Bishop's.
List with a dictatorial regime, than tripled. The cooperative sector of the been broken agriculture being United reconverted to exports of individua!
products for the United States and its allies, instead of serving But the fondation of the Bishop policies weren't just but conceived of, practiced, a totally different concept of one of seen in Eastern - or developea by labourısıl Coard in Britain, for that matter. It was a type not seen since the height of the Russian state did not substitute for the self-organisation of it was the basis for that The state was resource for Grenadans to draw on and The selfof trade or produceis, or young pespic core of Bishop's Grenadan Because it had mass democratic Grenadan state • was one ol une LALT N few in the world that dared to arm its that Cuban ana Nicalaguai states are the others that are able to The government had nothing to fear from It was no acident that the first action of the new government, after the grouping murdered There is, of course, a marxist name for the type of state that existed in Bishop's Grenada and which exists today in Nicaragua: the dictatorship of the proletariat. It reminds us that the how much of an economy is nationalised (in Grenada little was), but which society constituted the dictatorship of — not a restriction of democracy but its enorIt was this integration of democracy economic socal know, measures that made Grenada such an example of democratic socialism. That, together with the internationalism of death, the New Jewel Movement, was one of could no1 tolerate a government such as Maurice Questiond .of geography apart, the United States can far more easily coexthat of Jaruselski in Poland, than it can with a democratic and internationalist one such as Bishop's. After all, the States wants portay socialism as repression and tanks, not as health care, literacy and a vast extension of democracy.
More to the point, it is far easier to overthrow an East buropean regime, of the type Bernard Coard was seeking to install, than a democratic the Bishop type. America was able to intervene to overthrow after it murdered Bishop and started to attack the gains of the Grenadan people. The United States boycotted, but never dared attack, a democratic Grenada under Bishop.
Bishop was inspired and educated by the Cuban revolution. That was his government's strength. Understanding that socialism is about uniting in practice great historic goals and people's everyday lives is one of the greatest strengths of the Cuban leadership.
One of the lessons Castro has hammered home to his audience America and the Caribbean is not to socialism, ooes not exist as long as capitalism holds state power.
But the Cuban party itself - partClarV after the 1970s, when Cuban state became more tied Moscow economically — placed limitations on that democracy. Political differences in the Cuban Communist Party are never made known to the party ranks, much less argued out publicly.
In that sense, Loe CilDa munist Party models itself on the Communist Party of Stalin, not the Communist Party of Lenin. And that too was the weakness which proved fatal to the Maurice Bishop governThe open Maurice Bishop had begun to build so magnificiently in Grenadan society was not extended into the party itself. Hac the differences within the New Jewel Movement been known, 99 per cent of Grenadans would have supported Bishop against Coard. But they didn't and this was a tragic and fatal weakness.
One year after Maurice Bishop's that is not what we remember. In commemorating Bishop, above all we remember that he was the first black person ever to lead the working class to power, and one of the finest revolutionaries ever produced by the working class. One year on, the world has urgent need of two, three, many style Comrades, bright new dawn for the people of Grenada and the working people of had the Caribbean. That dawn marked the end of a long dark night of terror and the beginning of a new day. Our heroic people -masses — rose to the challenge of history and, in the words of the Caribbean poet, waite, 'shattered the entered that morning, fully aware of the future to come, there's no turning back.' As it has been said so often before, when a conscious, determined people rises lnlet 'enough', injustice, tyranny, mention ploitation begins a new and glorious chapter in the history of man (sic), the construction of a just and equal society by the poor, for
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in Grenada that democracy of the workers and peasants over the rest of