Andy Bowden
4th July 2007, 19:04
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=585
Grenada Comrades Freed
I was delighted to read that three Grenadan comrades, Chris Stroude, Lester Redhead and Cecil Prime have been released from prison, after 24 years of unjust incarceration. Their sentances were reduced after an appeal to the Privy Council.
Following the unlawful US invasion of Grenada in 1983 seventeen political prisoners were incarcerated in Richmond Hill Prison. The thirteen are former ministers of the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) or officers of Grenada’s People’s Army, they were tried by a kangaroo court following the US invasion in 1983. Their trial was widely regarded as a travesty, with the proceedings being organised and paid for by the American government, the prosecution being allowed to choose the jurors, and the defence being denied access to the documents that could establish their innocence. Amnesty International published a damning report of the proceedings.
In December 2006, three soldiers, Cosmos Richardson, Andy Mitchell and Vincent Joseph were released, and the only woman, Phylis Coard had earlier been released on health grounds.
The ten remaining prisoners, all members of the central committee of the New Jewel Movement, have finally been given a release date and should be out by 2010.
As I wrote in February: “ the essential tragedy of the Grenadan revolution is that despite the enormous and lasting progress that the country made under the brief rule of the PRG, the period ended with Prime Minister Maurice Bishop dead, and his childhood friend and comrade, Bernard Coard, in in prison for his murder.”
We need to understand the circumstances that led the new Jewel Movement coming to power. During the 1970s, Grenada was ruled by the frankly nutty, UFO enthusiast, Eric Gairy and his Grenada United Labour Party, who won an election in 1976, widely considered to have been completely rigged. The New Jewel Movement (NJM) was leading a popular campaign against illiteracy, poverty and economic under-development. Grenada is only a very small island, with a population of about 110000, and historically very poor.
It was widely known that from 1977 Gairy began receiving advice from General Augusto Pinochet of Chile and the Grenadan police and military were receiving “counter insurgency” training from the Chileans. In 1979 a rumour began circulating that Gairy planned to use his “Mongoose Gang” to assassinate leaders of the New Jewel Movement while he was out of the country. So in March that year, the NJM took over the nation’s radio station and assumed the government without a shot being fired.
What followed was a remarkable four years of progress. A new airport was constructed to establish a tourism base for the economy, and huge strides were made in education and housing. As Bernard Coard, former Minister of Finance, explained in an interview from prison in 1994: “”You can generate a lot of support from people through their pocketbooks. We set in place a mass housing program, often benefitting the poorest people in Grenada, the people in Gairy’s base, which influenced thousands of people, especially in a country where one house fits six or seven. We also relied heavily on the educational aspects of our mass rallies. … These mass rallies, usually led by Maurice Bishop, combined the spirit of the revolution with the basic information, economic factors local, national and international, that the people needed to understand their lives and surroundings. So these rallies were a new form of literacy which built political consciousness and support for the revolution.”
Significant numbers of Cuban and Russian doctors and teachers came to the island, and the level of illiteracy was halved during the four years. Even the nuns welcomed them. For the first time ever the Granadan government paid for students, often from modest backgrounds, to go overseas to study. Coard was himself an educationalist, a former academic at Sussex University, and a specialist in how black children were failed by British schools in the 1960s.
Accounts of the NJM often paint Coard as a Stalinist, but this is a crude misreading of the sitiation. Firstly, the alignment of Grenada with the USSR was forced upon them by the Americans, although as a former member of the British Communist Party Coard was probably warmly disposed to it. But most crucially, the NJM was a democratic party, and most of the party membership and the leadership were in favour of industrialisation, and seeking the aid of the USSR was simply pragmatic. Had they been around today they would probably have turned to Venezuela.
This is when the split with Maurice Bishop occurred. Bishop wanted to appease the Americans, and although his support in the party was tiny, he was much more popular outside the party, because the NJM had promoted him as a figurehead. The appalling tragedy of 1983 was that the Coard faction of the NJM placed Bishop under house arrest, fearing that Bishop was planning a populist stunt to oust the party leadership in order to steer a course more acceptable to Washington.
According to US academic, Rich Gibson, who has spent some time with the prisoners: “All concerned could easily see that a split in the party would only prompt a US invasion, with the likely death of every militant. Yet that tragedy happened anyway, and the ground work for it was not simply created by the failures of the NJM leadership (among them the sheer exhaustion of the leadership who took on too much themselves, and the denial of the key vision of the women in the party who saw this coming but whose voices were not really heard), but also laid by problems inherent in what was the socialist project. The relationship of internal problems to external US pressure (which was incessant and ranged from direct violence to subtle sabotage), is important to understand.”
Bishop was released from house arrest by a large crowd of people. There was violence, and Bishop was executed. I give this account very tersely not to be evasive but because we don’t really know what happened. It is not clear whether or not Bishop was planning a coup, and it is not clear whether his death was premeditated, and if so by whom. The Cuban government condemned the execution of Bishop. Yet Coard has many international supporters, and supporters within Grenada, who claim he had no part in Bishop’s death.
Having done so much to create these tensions, the USA invaded. The Americans have subsequently created a myth that there were Cuban and even Russian troops in Grenada. This is hogwash, they ran into determined military resistance from the Grenadan People’s Army. Defending the glimpse of a better life they had had under the NJM, the young men and women of the GPA fought ferociously to defend Granada and for the vision of mankind’s socialist future. The Empire was briefly stopped in its tracks, and only subdued Granada after six days, after committing an extra 7000 troops, equivalent to an army of 4,500,000 invading Britain.
On his release, Captain Lester Redhead of the Peoples Army said simply: “I’m innocent, I’m free”. Let us hope that all the comrades find peace.
***
I didn't know Grenadians were still being held in jail, after all these years. Does anyone know the political backgrounds of the prisoners - were they Coardites, non-aligned or simply PRA soldiers fighting an invasion?
I think the comments regarding the split in the NJM are worth discussing. What were the political divisions between the Coards and Bishops supporters? Was there any truth to the claim that it was a struggle between a pro-USSR, pro-industrialisation tendency vs one that wanted to reach an agreement with the Americans?
I have to say I've seen little evidence for that thesis, though its conceivable that Bishop was naive in regards to any (im)possible rapproachment with the US. No excuse whatsoever for the actions of Coard though even if there is a grain of truth in that allegation.
Grenada Comrades Freed
I was delighted to read that three Grenadan comrades, Chris Stroude, Lester Redhead and Cecil Prime have been released from prison, after 24 years of unjust incarceration. Their sentances were reduced after an appeal to the Privy Council.
Following the unlawful US invasion of Grenada in 1983 seventeen political prisoners were incarcerated in Richmond Hill Prison. The thirteen are former ministers of the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) or officers of Grenada’s People’s Army, they were tried by a kangaroo court following the US invasion in 1983. Their trial was widely regarded as a travesty, with the proceedings being organised and paid for by the American government, the prosecution being allowed to choose the jurors, and the defence being denied access to the documents that could establish their innocence. Amnesty International published a damning report of the proceedings.
In December 2006, three soldiers, Cosmos Richardson, Andy Mitchell and Vincent Joseph were released, and the only woman, Phylis Coard had earlier been released on health grounds.
The ten remaining prisoners, all members of the central committee of the New Jewel Movement, have finally been given a release date and should be out by 2010.
As I wrote in February: “ the essential tragedy of the Grenadan revolution is that despite the enormous and lasting progress that the country made under the brief rule of the PRG, the period ended with Prime Minister Maurice Bishop dead, and his childhood friend and comrade, Bernard Coard, in in prison for his murder.”
We need to understand the circumstances that led the new Jewel Movement coming to power. During the 1970s, Grenada was ruled by the frankly nutty, UFO enthusiast, Eric Gairy and his Grenada United Labour Party, who won an election in 1976, widely considered to have been completely rigged. The New Jewel Movement (NJM) was leading a popular campaign against illiteracy, poverty and economic under-development. Grenada is only a very small island, with a population of about 110000, and historically very poor.
It was widely known that from 1977 Gairy began receiving advice from General Augusto Pinochet of Chile and the Grenadan police and military were receiving “counter insurgency” training from the Chileans. In 1979 a rumour began circulating that Gairy planned to use his “Mongoose Gang” to assassinate leaders of the New Jewel Movement while he was out of the country. So in March that year, the NJM took over the nation’s radio station and assumed the government without a shot being fired.
What followed was a remarkable four years of progress. A new airport was constructed to establish a tourism base for the economy, and huge strides were made in education and housing. As Bernard Coard, former Minister of Finance, explained in an interview from prison in 1994: “”You can generate a lot of support from people through their pocketbooks. We set in place a mass housing program, often benefitting the poorest people in Grenada, the people in Gairy’s base, which influenced thousands of people, especially in a country where one house fits six or seven. We also relied heavily on the educational aspects of our mass rallies. … These mass rallies, usually led by Maurice Bishop, combined the spirit of the revolution with the basic information, economic factors local, national and international, that the people needed to understand their lives and surroundings. So these rallies were a new form of literacy which built political consciousness and support for the revolution.”
Significant numbers of Cuban and Russian doctors and teachers came to the island, and the level of illiteracy was halved during the four years. Even the nuns welcomed them. For the first time ever the Granadan government paid for students, often from modest backgrounds, to go overseas to study. Coard was himself an educationalist, a former academic at Sussex University, and a specialist in how black children were failed by British schools in the 1960s.
Accounts of the NJM often paint Coard as a Stalinist, but this is a crude misreading of the sitiation. Firstly, the alignment of Grenada with the USSR was forced upon them by the Americans, although as a former member of the British Communist Party Coard was probably warmly disposed to it. But most crucially, the NJM was a democratic party, and most of the party membership and the leadership were in favour of industrialisation, and seeking the aid of the USSR was simply pragmatic. Had they been around today they would probably have turned to Venezuela.
This is when the split with Maurice Bishop occurred. Bishop wanted to appease the Americans, and although his support in the party was tiny, he was much more popular outside the party, because the NJM had promoted him as a figurehead. The appalling tragedy of 1983 was that the Coard faction of the NJM placed Bishop under house arrest, fearing that Bishop was planning a populist stunt to oust the party leadership in order to steer a course more acceptable to Washington.
According to US academic, Rich Gibson, who has spent some time with the prisoners: “All concerned could easily see that a split in the party would only prompt a US invasion, with the likely death of every militant. Yet that tragedy happened anyway, and the ground work for it was not simply created by the failures of the NJM leadership (among them the sheer exhaustion of the leadership who took on too much themselves, and the denial of the key vision of the women in the party who saw this coming but whose voices were not really heard), but also laid by problems inherent in what was the socialist project. The relationship of internal problems to external US pressure (which was incessant and ranged from direct violence to subtle sabotage), is important to understand.”
Bishop was released from house arrest by a large crowd of people. There was violence, and Bishop was executed. I give this account very tersely not to be evasive but because we don’t really know what happened. It is not clear whether or not Bishop was planning a coup, and it is not clear whether his death was premeditated, and if so by whom. The Cuban government condemned the execution of Bishop. Yet Coard has many international supporters, and supporters within Grenada, who claim he had no part in Bishop’s death.
Having done so much to create these tensions, the USA invaded. The Americans have subsequently created a myth that there were Cuban and even Russian troops in Grenada. This is hogwash, they ran into determined military resistance from the Grenadan People’s Army. Defending the glimpse of a better life they had had under the NJM, the young men and women of the GPA fought ferociously to defend Granada and for the vision of mankind’s socialist future. The Empire was briefly stopped in its tracks, and only subdued Granada after six days, after committing an extra 7000 troops, equivalent to an army of 4,500,000 invading Britain.
On his release, Captain Lester Redhead of the Peoples Army said simply: “I’m innocent, I’m free”. Let us hope that all the comrades find peace.
***
I didn't know Grenadians were still being held in jail, after all these years. Does anyone know the political backgrounds of the prisoners - were they Coardites, non-aligned or simply PRA soldiers fighting an invasion?
I think the comments regarding the split in the NJM are worth discussing. What were the political divisions between the Coards and Bishops supporters? Was there any truth to the claim that it was a struggle between a pro-USSR, pro-industrialisation tendency vs one that wanted to reach an agreement with the Americans?
I have to say I've seen little evidence for that thesis, though its conceivable that Bishop was naive in regards to any (im)possible rapproachment with the US. No excuse whatsoever for the actions of Coard though even if there is a grain of truth in that allegation.