by Paul Sutton

On 25^th October 1983 the USA invaded the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada without warning. It did so in a military operation that was kept so secret that Mrs Thatcher, then British prime minister, was only informed by Ronald Reagan, then US president, that they were doing so less than 12 hours before the first US forces landed, even though Grenada was a former British colony and the Queen was still its head of state. It led to strained relations for a few days between London and Washington DC and threw into doubt whether the US would consult on, or give any warning of, the use of cruise missiles due to be stationed at Greenham Common in the UK in a matter of weeks.

BUILDING SOCIALISM 

It also brought to an end the attempt by the New Jewel Movement (NJM) to build socialism in Grenada. It had taken power four and a half years earlier in a virtually bloodless coup/insurrection against the increasingly dictatorial and brutal government of Eric Gairy, the prime minister.  He was out of Grenada at the time addressing the United Nations, urging them to establish a body to investigate ‘unidentified flying objects’ (UFOs). While away he had ordered the arrest and murder by his secret police of the leading members of the NJM. Warned of this the NJM seized power to popular acclaim, summed up in the slogan chanted throughout Grenada: ‘Freedom come. Gairy go. Gairy gone with U.F.O.’

The task facing the NJM was formidable. Grenada was an island of 133 sq. miles with a population of about 90,000. It had been forced into independence in 1974 against the will of the majority of the people, including the NJM which emerged as the main opposition to Gairy. The NJM was subject to mounting intimidation and violence and in 1975 took the decision that to survive it would need to transform itself into a Marxist-Leninist party. On taking power it inherited a primarily agricultural economy characterised by decades of neglect and dependent on just a few agricultural exports, notably nutmeg and spices, for most of its foreign exchange. Given its socialist ideology, the NJM aimed to radically transform the country by a programme of non-capitalist development. This envisaged a state-led model of economic development of increasing national ownership, alongside a private sector moving toward co-operative enterprises, and building infrastructure, notably through the construction of a new international airport to encourage tourism.

Alongside this were programmes to reduce high levels of unemployment, increase educational participation, and develop worker engagement through trade unions and involvement in mass organisations for women and youth among others. These social programmes encouraged support for the NJM and commitment to the Revolution. The economy moved from stagnation under Gairy to modest growth and Grenada once again was able to access international development loans which had been denied Gairy, given the scale of corruption in the country. At the end of 1981, when I visited Grenada, there were visible signs of economic progress and social improvement everywhere as well as widespread support for the policies of the NJM.

In developing their programmes Grenada had turned to Cuba and then the Soviet Union for aid. Cuba quickly supplied weapons and training to create a People’s Revolutionary Army (PRA) and then materials and construction workers to begin the building of the airport.  It also offered hundreds of scholarships in Cuba for higher education and provided advice and encouragement for Grenada to take a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement. The Soviet Union, after a cautious start, also began to provide finance and training as well as some military assistance.

US HOSTILITY 

Such links alarmed the US government which viewed the Caribbean as its ‘backyard’. Within a month of the NJM taking power it had warned them not to develop links with Cuba, a warning quicky condemned and then rejected by Maurice Bishop, the leader of the NJM, in a much-publicised speech which proclaimed ‘We are in nobody’s backyard’. Relations between the US and Grenada accordingly deteriorated and, with the election of Reagan in November 1980, became strident. Soon after he took office Reagan implemented a policy of open hostility to Grenada exemplified by staging large-scale military exercises (involving 120,000 troops, 250 warships, and 1,000 aircraft) off Puerto Rico in August 1981, codenamed ‘Operation Amber’, the objective of which was to capture a mountainous island and install a government friendly to the USA. By March 1983 Reagan was claiming: “the so-called experts who argued that we shouldn’t worry about Castroite control over the island of Grenada haven’t taken a good look at the map lately...It isn’t nutmeg that is at stake in the Caribbean and Central America: it is the United States’ national security” (1).

Military threats were further amplified by US policies seeking to isolate Grenada in the region and deny it loans by international agencies. The squeeze this put upon programmes of economic and social transformation increased considerably and in 1982 the Revolution began running into difficulties. The NJM sought to address this in a series of Central Committee meetings that culminated in a Special General Meeting of all members in September to consider the way forward. Among the considerations was whether it would become a mass political party or remain small and tightly focused (it then had less than 100 full members, 100 candidate members and 200 applicant members). It opted for the latter and in a document entitled ‘Line of March’ put even more responsibilities on the NJM to lead the Revolution. In retrospect, and many years later, Bernard Coard, the most important person in the NJM after Maurice Bishop, wrote: “in many ways, the future course of the Revolution was set at that Special General Meeting” (2). Things got worse, not better and a year later the Revolution was in acute crisis and about to implode.

To attempt to moderate US pressures Bishop went to Washington DC in June 1983 hoping to meet with senior US officials and even possibly Reagan. He was ignored and, toward the end, a hastily convened brief meeting with the US National Security Adviser and Deputy Secretary of State resolved nothing. Returning empty-handed Bishop spoke to an emergency meeting of the NJM. It now saw the threat of US invasion as ‘not imminent but inevitable’. In the meantime, the NJM was acutely aware that its membership was becoming exhausted through overwork and support for the Revolution was fast draining away as economic and social programmes were cut back and slowly ground to a halt.

CONFLICT IN NJM 

More meetings were held over three days in September. It was eventually decided to move to Joint Leadership of the NJM with Marice Bishop remaining as the leader in charge of political links with ‘the masses’ and international relations while Coard was to return to the Central Committee (he had resigned a year earlier) and direct and develop work within the NJM. Immediately after, Bishop left for a visit to Eastern Europe and Cuba and when he returned a week later he rejected Joint Leadership, precipitating a further crisis. More meetings in the next weeks resolved nothing and rumours began to circulate widely that Coard was planning to murder Bishop and take command. Relations between Coard and Bishop broke down and, in response to a belief that Bishop was the source of the rumours, the Central Committee put him under ‘house arrest’ on 13^th October. This proved the final straw. Spontaneous demonstrations broke out all over Grenada with the slogan ‘No Bishop, No Revo’. On October 19^th a mass demonstration released him and he and some other leading members of the NJM, along with some of the crowd, went to Fort Rupert the head-quarters of the PRA in the capital St George’s where they disarmed the soldiers, without a fight and distributed their weapons among those present.

What happened then is contested but essentially other elements of the PRA intervened to recapture the fort. Shots were fired and members of the crowd and several PRA were killed. Bishop and three other leading members of the NJM were put against a wall and shot. In all, 20 died. The PRA took over and declared martial law. 

INVASION 

The tumultuous events of these weeks had not gone unnoticed by Grenada’s neighbours in the Commonwealth Caribbean, all of whom had been former British colonies. In the early days they had welcomed the NJM and many remained broadly supportive of the economic and social aims of the Revolution, but when it refused to hold elections to legitimate its coup/insurrection support began to weaken among some countries, such as Jamaica and Barbados, who had elected right-wing governments. Some other smaller islands of the Eastern Caribbean such as Antigua, Dominica and St Lucia also began to worry about their security as the NJM adopted an increasingly socialist agenda and built up the PRA. The confusion and chaos in Grenada in September/early October alarmed them and with the killing of Bishop the prime minister of Barbados, Tom Adams, sensed an opportunity. On 19^th October, citing the authority of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), he asked the US to participate in a multinational military force to intervene.

By then the chaos in Grenada had also alerted the US. They were immediately concerned because they had some 1,000 nationals living in Grenada, three-quarters of whom were students studying medicine at a private university. A special group to consider their evacuation began meeting in Washington DC from October 13^th citing fears that the students might be taken hostage (as had happened in Tehran in the late 1970s). Planning continued and intensified as the situation in Grenada deteriorated, eventually taking on the form of a possible invasion. On 20^th October the Joint Chiefs of Staff decided this was militarily feasible and on 23^rd October Reagan gave the go-ahead to launch the invasion.

The US attacked with overwhelming force and met with some resistance by the PRA and the Cubans working on the airport. In all, 16 Grenadians, 19 US and 24 Cubans were killed. No students were harmed and while some 400 plus subsequently asked to be evacuated the Vice-Chancellor of their university stated that none of them were ever in any danger. Coard and leading members of the PRA and NJM were arrested and 17 of them, including Coard, were put on trial in Grenada and sentenced to death, without any firm evidence, for ordering Bishop’s murder. This was later commuted to life imprisonment and following a series of appeals claiming an irregular and prejudiced trial they were all finally released by 2009.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND MISTAKES 

Soon after the events I wrote a book on Grenada, along with two other colleagues (3). Many more books and articles have followed since, examining both the Revolution and the Invasion. In respect of the former the dominant view is that while the Revolution delivered many economic and social benefits it failed politically by adopting a too rigid and inflexible attitude to problems of political leadership of both the NJM and the Grenadian people. As Coard himself chronicles in his recent books on Grenada, mistake after mistake was made until in the end the Revolution collapsed in political chaos.

In respect of the latter, detailed work by Gary Williams (4) shows that the chaos in Grenada was too good an opportunity for the Reagan Administration to miss, providing the pretext to intervene, ‘legitimated’ in US eyes but not in international law by the decision of the OECS to ask it to do so. The United Nations General Assembly condemned the invasion by 108 votes to 9. However, as far as the US was concerned it allowed them to ‘roll-back’ Cuban influence in the Caribbean and assert its power in the region which it had claimed was of special interest to it as far back as 1823.

In 1984 Ronald Reagan visited Grenada and in 1998 Fidel Castro. I re-visited Grenada in 2022. The most visible signs of the Revolution were the completed Maurice Bishop international Airport and the three separate memorials to the Cubans, Grenadians and US soldiers who died in the invasion. The Revolution and Invasion are briefly covered in school text books but otherwise there is no mention of them other than the annual commemoration church service on October 25^th. Grenada looks and feels very much like its neighbouring Eastern Caribbean islands.

(1) US Government, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, 14 March 1983.

(2) Bernard Coard, The Grenada Revolution: What Really Happened? (McDermott Publishing: Jamaica and Grenada), 2017 p. 72

(3) Anthony Payne, Paul Sutton and Tony Thorndike, Grenada: Revolution and Invasion (Croom Helm: London, 1984).

(4) Gary Williams, US-Grenada Relations: Revolution and Intervention in the Backyard (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

US helicopters over Port Salinas airport Grenada 1983

Cuban prisoner captured by the US during invasion being repatriated photo by DPLA