E.M. Gairy and Grenada’s Revolution
March 13, 1979 Grenadians woke up to hear on the radio that a revolution had happened overnight, one policeman killed, the leftist Maurice Bishop was in charge of the country. Coup would have been a better name. Why did this happen? Perhaps you could say that if there was no Eric Gairy there would have been no Maurice Bishop.
Gairy returned to Grenada from Aruba in the early 50’s. He galvanized the poorly paid agricultural workers into action, fought for and won better conditions and wages for them from the estate owners. Eric Matthew Gairy, who demanded Grenada’s politics from the early 50’s to 1979, was a believer in the occult.
In 1970, a house in the city, thought bythe owners to be haunted was visited for a week by a priest who brought a bus load of followers to exorcise the spirits ending with the slaying of a goat and a fowl and the dancing that led to a “catching of the spirit!” All this viewed from the roadside by curious Grenadians including myself and our children.
At one time Gairy let it be known that he would walk on water on a particular evening. This was to be the waters of the Carenage. However, shortly before the event was to occur he called it off. Having said this Grenada, perhaps because of the British influence is (and always has been) very much a Christian country on the whole and practices the old traditional values which so many other societies have abandoned.
His charisma rallied the people around him and he used every means at his disposal to mesmerize and control. In 1974 he gained independence for Grenada from Britain but it was against a backdrop of rising opposition from a group calling themselves the “New Jewel Movement.” This was a leftist group, opposed Gairy’s autocratic rule and already aligned with Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
Gairy used force against the movement, sending his thugs Grenadians called the Mongoose Gang (like Haiti’s “Tonton Macoute” ) to beat up, and, it was widely believed, sometimes kill people who opposed him. By 1979 the island was ripe for an explosion. Did Gairy sense this? Two weeks before the ‘revolution’ he left the island with so much luggage that we wondered if he were coming back.
During the early months Grenadians seemed happy with the Maurice Bishop rule. A sense of self, of being in charge of themselves, a friendly, ‘Hello comrade’ on the street. A hope for equality at last. It was not to be. A faction within the party led by Bernard Coard whose hardline communist ideas clashed with Bishop’s more lenient approach led to bishop being put under house arrest and eventually executed at Fort George along with his top men. This gave the Americans the excuse they were waiting for to come in and end the threat of communism at their back door, and a warship was sent to Grenada, C130’s parachuted men on to the airport, jets and helicopters arrived and within 4 to 5 days the war was won.
On the first day about a dozen men of the revolutionary army took up residence on our lawn overlooking the approach road from city, armed with AK47’s hand grenades and boxes of ammunition. Hiding behind the large royal palms, 2 men waited for the Americans whom they expected to approach in vehicles. We were confined to the house having refused help from friends who called to ask if we wanted them to alert the American army so they’d get rid of the Grenadians – who needed to be in the middle of that!
By afternoon I tried to get rid of them and offered food. Handing it out at the back door we were watched by an American helicopter gunship with open door, a soldier pointing his gun at us, the helicopter hovering under the canopy of a mahogany tree. By afternoon we thought they’d gone and ventured out to feed the dog. A Grenadian soldier turned unexpectedly and shot the dog who, in his surprise, barked and ran at him. These were young men, some in their teens, some we knew went to school with our boys. He apologized.
By the next day we had to sleep in the storeroom downstairs, going upstairs only when the jets stopped screaming overhead. By the end of the week the American soldiers walked up our gap in jungle regalia, leaves and branches stuck to their helmets, guns at the ready. Wish I’d taken a photo, they poked our ponds with sticks and ordered us to take up anything they found – poor water lilies. Searched the house and found Marx and Lenin literature in the study given to my husband by the Russian Ambassador to Grenada and put them on the shelves since that was the place one put books. They found some ammunition in the bushes.
The great majority of Grenadians were very relieved when democracy was restored. After a few months of Bishop’s rule it became clear that he did not intend to hold elections and his disregard for the rule of law, imprisoning persons who disagreed with his ideas, documents like ‘The Line of March’ which set out he method that would be used to appropriate privately owned estates meant that there was great celebrating in Oct. 1983. All over the island, Grenadians wrote on bridges, walls, roads, “thank you, America”. Today Grenada is stable, the lesson learned, this will never happen again.
Gairy returned to Grenada from Aruba in the early 50’s. He galvanized the poorly paid agricultural workers into action, fought for and won better conditions and wages for them from the estate owners. Eric Matthew Gairy, who demanded Grenada’s politics from the early 50’s to 1979, was a believer in the occult.
In 1970, a house in the city, thought bythe owners to be haunted was visited for a week by a priest who brought a bus load of followers to exorcise the spirits ending with the slaying of a goat and a fowl and the dancing that led to a “catching of the spirit!” All this viewed from the roadside by curious Grenadians including myself and our children.
At one time Gairy let it be known that he would walk on water on a particular evening. This was to be the waters of the Carenage. However, shortly before the event was to occur he called it off. Having said this Grenada, perhaps because of the British influence is (and always has been) very much a Christian country on the whole and practices the old traditional values which so many other societies have abandoned.
His charisma rallied the people around him and he used every means at his disposal to mesmerize and control. In 1974 he gained independence for Grenada from Britain but it was against a backdrop of rising opposition from a group calling themselves the “New Jewel Movement.” This was a leftist group, opposed Gairy’s autocratic rule and already aligned with Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
Gairy used force against the movement, sending his thugs Grenadians called the Mongoose Gang (like Haiti’s “Tonton Macoute” ) to beat up, and, it was widely believed, sometimes kill people who opposed him. By 1979 the island was ripe for an explosion. Did Gairy sense this? Two weeks before the ‘revolution’ he left the island with so much luggage that we wondered if he were coming back.
During the early months Grenadians seemed happy with the Maurice Bishop rule. A sense of self, of being in charge of themselves, a friendly, ‘Hello comrade’ on the street. A hope for equality at last. It was not to be. A faction within the party led by Bernard Coard whose hardline communist ideas clashed with Bishop’s more lenient approach led to bishop being put under house arrest and eventually executed at Fort George along with his top men. This gave the Americans the excuse they were waiting for to come in and end the threat of communism at their back door, and a warship was sent to Grenada, C130’s parachuted men on to the airport, jets and helicopters arrived and within 4 to 5 days the war was won.
On the first day about a dozen men of the revolutionary army took up residence on our lawn overlooking the approach road from city, armed with AK47’s hand grenades and boxes of ammunition. Hiding behind the large royal palms, 2 men waited for the Americans whom they expected to approach in vehicles. We were confined to the house having refused help from friends who called to ask if we wanted them to alert the American army so they’d get rid of the Grenadians – who needed to be in the middle of that!
By afternoon I tried to get rid of them and offered food. Handing it out at the back door we were watched by an American helicopter gunship with open door, a soldier pointing his gun at us, the helicopter hovering under the canopy of a mahogany tree. By afternoon we thought they’d gone and ventured out to feed the dog. A Grenadian soldier turned unexpectedly and shot the dog who, in his surprise, barked and ran at him. These were young men, some in their teens, some we knew went to school with our boys. He apologized.
By the next day we had to sleep in the storeroom downstairs, going upstairs only when the jets stopped screaming overhead. By the end of the week the American soldiers walked up our gap in jungle regalia, leaves and branches stuck to their helmets, guns at the ready. Wish I’d taken a photo, they poked our ponds with sticks and ordered us to take up anything they found – poor water lilies. Searched the house and found Marx and Lenin literature in the study given to my husband by the Russian Ambassador to Grenada and put them on the shelves since that was the place one put books. They found some ammunition in the bushes.
The great majority of Grenadians were very relieved when democracy was restored. After a few months of Bishop’s rule it became clear that he did not intend to hold elections and his disregard for the rule of law, imprisoning persons who disagreed with his ideas, documents like ‘The Line of March’ which set out he method that would be used to appropriate privately owned estates meant that there was great celebrating in Oct. 1983. All over the island, Grenadians wrote on bridges, walls, roads, “thank you, America”. Today Grenada is stable, the lesson learned, this will never happen again.
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