Stalinist coup killed Maurice Bishop, Grenada Revolution
https://themilitant.com/2021/10/16/stalinist-coup-killed-maurice-bishop-grenada-revolution/
October 25, 2021
Maurice Bishop, left, leader of Grenada Revolution, with Fidel Castro at
May Day 1980 rally in Cuba. Bishop was “a true revolutionary,” Castro
said. But “hyenas emerged from the revolutionary ranks” there,
“destroyed the revolution and opened the door to imperialist aggression.”
Maurice Bishop, left, leader of Grenada Revolution, with Fidel Castro at
May Day 1980 rally in Cuba. Bishop was “a true revolutionary,” Castro
said. But “hyenas emerged from the revolutionary ranks” there,
“destroyed the revolution and opened the door to imperialist aggression.”
To commemorate the 1979-83 Grenada Revolution, which was overthrown by a
Stalinist coup led by Bernard Coard in October 1983, we are running
excerpts from “The Second Assassination of Maurice Bishop” by Steve
Clark, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party. Bishop, a central leader
of the revolution on this small Caribbean island, was murdered in the
coup. The article is from New International no. 6, a magazine of Marxist
politics and theory. Copyright © 1987 by New International. Reprinted by
permission.
BY STEVE CLARK
In mid-October 1983 a faction led by Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard
in Grenada’s army, government, and New Jewel Movement (NJM) overthrew
the workers’ and farmers’ government brought to power by the March 13,
1979, revolution.
Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, backed by other NJM leaders and the
overwhelming majority of the island’s workers and farmers, resisted this
counterrevolution and attempted to reverse it. On October 19 the
Grenadian people launched an uprising to restore their government to
power. They shut down workplaces, poured into the streets of the
capital, St. George’s, and freed Bishop, who had been placed under house
arrest by the Coard faction. Estimates of the crowd range from 15,000 to
30,000 — equivalent for that island of 110,000 people to an outpouring
of 35 to 65 million in the United States.
Troops loyal to Coard’s faction turned their guns on the mass
demonstration, killing many participants and wounding others. They
assassinated Maurice Bishop and five other revolutionary leaders —
Fitzroy Bain, Norris Bain, Jacqueline Creft, Vincent Noel, and Unison
Whiteman. The working people of Grenada were stunned and demoralized.
One week later, on October 25, United States armed forces stormed the
island and occupied it. The Coard faction had handed free Grenada to
imperialism on a silver platter. The country once again was shackled
with a government subservient to Washington.
Discredited worldwide by these crimes and their disastrous consequences,
Bernard Coard and his followers have tried ever since to cover their
tracks by conducting a second assassination of Maurice Bishop. Their
political targets include all those revolutionaries — in the Caribbean,
North America, and elsewhere — who champion and seek to learn from
Bishop’s political legacy.
The first assassination succeeded in eliminating Maurice Bishop himself.
But Bishop’s accomplishments and example as a revolutionary
internationalist leader proved more enduring than Coard had reckoned. As
the truth came out about what actually happened in October 1983 —
through the efforts of surviving Grenadian revolutionaries, Cuban
president Fidel Castro, and others — the original explanations presented
by Coard and his followers were increasingly repudiated by communists,
anti-imperialist fighters, and progressive-minded people throughout the
world. …
Fidel Castro has aptly characterized Bernard Coard as an “alleged
theoretician of the revolution who had been a professor of Marxism in
Jamaica.” Coard sought to establish himself and his faction as “a kind
of a priesthood of the doctrine, guardian of the doctrine, theoretician
of the doctrine, philosopher of the doctrine,” Castro explained.
The Coard group “didn’t work with the masses; it worked among the party
members … and with the cadres of the army and the Ministry of the
Interior,” Castro said. Coard “was the scholar of politics, the
professor of political science; while Bishop was the man who worked with
the masses, worked with the people, worked with the administration, and
was active internationally.” That was what established Maurice Bishop as
the central leader of the Grenada revolution and of the New Jewel
Movement. …
Stalinism destroyed the Grenada revolution. Bernard Coard was trained in
its brutality, rigidity, and bureaucratic “decisiveness.” Like all
Stalinists, he confused political clarity with dogmatism, centralism
with commands, flexibility with softness, discipline with submission,
firmness with harshness. The faction he was building in Grenada was
truly petty bourgeois — the nucleus of an administrative caste trained
in giving orders and wielding authority, not of a political vanguard of
the working class relying on the revolutionary organization,
mobilization, and political education of the exploited producers.
Maurice Bishop, not Bernard Coard, was the communist educator of
Grenadian working people. Through Bishop’s speeches, workers and farmers
gained a deeper understanding of the class struggle in Grenada, the
Caribbean, and worldwide. Through working to deepen the Grenadian
people’s involvement in the revolution, Bishop helped promote their
class-struggle experience and politicization. Bernard Coard was not a
“brilliant master of Marxist strategy and tactics.” He was a Stalinist
phrasemonger.
Although Stalinism remains a powerful obstacle to workers’ and peasants’
struggles, as shown by the events in Grenada, its hold over the
international working-class movement has been irreversibly weakened by
the advance of the world revolution since the closing years of World War
II. Above all, a corner was turned in 1959 with the victory of the Cuban
revolution under the leadership of a revolutionary internationalist
leadership. Revolutionary-minded workers, peasants, and youth throughout
Latin America and many other parts of the world have been attracted to
and influenced by the example of the Cuban Communist Party. …
Bernard Coard’s political course was based on a rejection in practice of
what [Russian revolutionary leader V.I.] Lenin called “one of the most
profound and at the same time most simple and comprehensible precepts of
Marxism.” …
“In the final analysis,” Lenin said, “the reason our revolution has left
all other revolutions far behind is that … it has aroused tens of
millions of people, formerly uninterested in state development, to take
an active part in the work of building the state.”
That is the communist perspective that Maurice Bishop died fighting to
advance.
Front Page Articles
Kellogg strike is in the interest of all workers!
Fight Texas law that attacks a woman’s right to choose abortion
SWP campaign builds support for workers’ struggles today
Workers increasingly turn to our unions to fight assaults by bosses
Minnesota court uses Chauvin’s appeal to go after rights workers need
Feature Articles
‘Cuban Revolution: a challenge to US imperialism’
Also In This Issue
Stalinist coup killed Maurice Bishop, Grenada Revolution
Louisville forum: ‘SWP is on its way to Cincinnati!’
John Deere workers reject contract, set strike
Join Socialist Workers Party campaign!
Celebrate political life of Maurice Williams
Campaign to expand reach of 'Militant,' books, SWP fund October
2-November 23 (week one)
On the Picket Line
Cereal maintenance workers in UK fight wage cuts
Michigan auto-parts workers strike, win UAW union
‘We are fighting for respect,’ say Montreal hotel strikers
25, 50 and 75 years ago
© Copyright 2021 The Militant - 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor - New
York, NY 10018 - themilitant@xxxxxxx
--
― Aron Ra, “This is what science always has to do, but religion will not
do that. While scientists themselves may be religious individuals of
many different faiths, their methodology was designed to be the
antithesis of faith—it requires that all assumptions be questioned, that
all proposed explanations be based on demonstrable evidence, and that
all hypotheses be testable and potentially falsifiable. Blaming magic is
never acceptable because miracles aren't explanations of any kind, and
there has never been a single instance in history when assuming the
supernatural has ever improved our understanding of everything. In fact,
such excuses have only ever impeded our attempts at discovery.” ― Aron
Ra, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism
