Fall of "New Jewel"

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Join the Labour Committee on Ireland. BM Box 5355, London WCIN 3XX THIRTY men of Maurice Bishop's New Jewel Movement seized power on March 13 1979 in an armed rising against the police and army of prime minister Eric Gairy.

Only three lives were lost. The army was disbanded and replaced by the People's Revolutionary Army, drawn from supporters of New Jewel* New Jewel already had a chequered career behind it. Bishop was leader of the official Parliamentary opposition, and New Jewel was part of the Socialist International, but politically and ideologically the movement had been shaped by black power and by Castroism.

The US Black Power movement of the late '60s spilled over into the Caribbean and merged with discontent and disappointment with the fruits of independence, then a decade old.

There was much to be discontented with in Grenada. With 100,000 people in 32 square miles, and the economy heavily dependent on cocoa, nutmeg and bananas, it had been dominated since the '50s by Eric Gairy.

Gairy had risen to prominence as the leader of a powerful revolt of the semi-proletarianised farmers, whose high point was a General Strike in 1951. Gairy organised them into a union, created a political party - and promptly formed an alliance with the ruling class.

By the '7Os he ran a vicious, corrupt and repressive regime, modelled in part on Duvalier's Haiti. Gairy's Tonton Macoute terror outfit was known as the Mongoose Gang. He believed in flying saucers and tried to convince the UN to get in contact with them.

Parliament was intact but feeble, and didn't meet very often. Gairy became more and more rapacious and, like the Somoza family in Nicaragua, alienated the local bourgeoisie by being too greedy and competitive, using the state to back him up.

New Jewel formed a coalition in the mid '70s with two bourgeois groups, together with whom they fought the last general election. There was a series of mass struggles involving the small working class in 1973-4. Three 'general strikes' occurred, actively backed by sections of the bourgeoisie.

Finally, New Jewel created a clandestine military group and seized power from the discredited Gairy. Avowedly bourgeois representatives were in the new revolutionary government.

The New Jewel leaders were all middle class - Bishop a London-trained barrister, his opponent Coard a British- and American educated university teacher. They created political structures loosely modelled on Cuba.

'Mass organisations' were supposed to 'involve' the masses, and did, but power remained in the hands of the New Jewel elite. They would consult and listen, but they decided.

The New Jewel movement itself also lacked democratic structures, though it had the trappings of a party.

Three factors brought the Grenada revolution to ruin.

• The objective conditions. Grenada is a tiny, poor island, with few resources. It needed aid and support to develop. The US immediately cut off IMF aid and credits, though European capitalist countries and Canada made loans and grants, and the airport was partly built with capitalist funds. Inevitably Grenada developed a certain dependence on Cuba and indirectly the USSR.

• The elitism of the movement. If they didn't keep Bishop's promise to hold elections -which they would surely have won — it was because they really believed in a system modelled on Cuba, with 'mass organisations' in practice completely dominated by an elite. They committed themselves to a mixed economy, but the New Jewel exercised a real dictatorship. Their political model was essentially Stalinist.

• Political confusion. Variously the leaders talked of going for 'real independence' , of a 'noncapitalist road' of development. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the split which led to the killing of Bishop and his supporters was around a drive for full state control of the economy, represented by Coard and a majority of the elite. Bishop was publicly committed to placating the USA and developing the economy by way of tourism.

The private faction fight in the elite only went public when it was ready to get bloody. Bishop was vastly popular. His killing must have spread tremendous confusion and demoralisation -just when the Americans came.

They had been waiting their chance, and Reagan was desperate to be seen doing something after the slaughter of US troops in Lebanon.

* New Jewel was formed from two previous organisations in 1973. Jewel is derived from *Joint Effort for Welfare, Education, and Labour' acted "just in time" to prevent a full-scale Cuban takeover.

There were vast numbers of Cuban troops and armament on the island, he claimed: these were part of a Moscow-led "network of surrogates and terrorists"

Exactly why the Cubans - or the USSR — needed to establish a base on a tiny Caribbean island when they already have Cuba, or how a handful of rifles and pistols in a shed in Grenada wuld menace the power of US imperialism, Reagan of course never attempted to explain.

Since these allegations were made, however, even US Senate committees have begun to tear them apart: there was no evidence of plans for a "Cuban takeover"; Reagan's claim of over 1,000 Cuban soldiers has been refuted with a tally of only 738 Cubans (now all accounted for by US forces); the stock of small arms discovered and publicised by the State Department were for the island's 10,000-strong part-time militia.

And far from the resistance being solely conducted by Cubans, it has been admitted that Grenadian militia forces are still fighting the US invaders.

Meanwhile the Washington Post has begun to uncover the behind-the-scenes arm-twisting and manoeuvres - dating back to before the Grenada coup -t'at lined up the "invitation" t the US invasion from stooge right-wing Caribbean governN enI - in particular the Barbados government.

None of this is new.

The last US Caribbean invasion - a the Dominican Republic in April 1965 - was prefaced by President Johnson's demand that the leader of the right wing ruling junta make a written request for US intervention, citing the "danger to lives and property" as the reason. Johnson then described the invasion as a "rescue mission"

The US ambassador in Santo Domingo cabled horror stories of communist agitation, murder and atrocities, which were published by the American press irenadan "arms dump" scal ame in 1954 as the USA pr ared an invasion of right win ¡ercenary exiles to topple th eformist government of Pres ent Arbenz of Guatemala.

Arbenz - in desperation • rdered a shipload of small arn om the USSR to ward o ttacks from the CIA-backe unmen, based in Honduras an icaragua.

The Eisenhower administra on promptly claimed that th istols and rifles might be use • attack the Panama Canal -i)0 miles away!

The shipment was then use s a pretext to step up the offer "e against Guatemala an Sa't ust Arbenz.

There is even a precedent f le l'a disregard for the fine ›elings of Thatcher's Britis overnment. In 1961, the eler un victory of left reformis heddi Jagan in British Guian as regarded as unacceptabl wale y the Kennedy administratior hough Macmillan's Torie ere prepared to work wit agan, they bowed to U ressure, and cooperated wit IA plans to establish "yellow nons and eventually toppl egan in 1963. A TOWNON TRIAL New pamphlet, 50p; latest T bulletin, 30p, plus postag From TSC, BM Box 596 London WCIN 3XX.

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Saturday October 29: Greenham women storm the base • 301. Heseltine: threat to sh 4A FRIS ot protestors Troops and cops join forces against G