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This chapter provides the broad framework for the volume. It introduces the reader to the principal aim and purpose of the work. It discusses the Grenada Revolution from various perspectives and raises probing questions about that Cold War, Caribbean radicalism and the significance of the Grenada Revolution and the US invasion as a critical period in the post-colonial experience of the Caribbean. It then outlines the various chapter themes.

The twenty-fifth anniversary in October, 2008, of the tragic killing of Maurice Bishop and his associates and the subsequent invasion of Grenada, followed closely by the release on September 5, 2009, of Bernard Coard and the six remaining prisoners convicted of his murder, has been cause for a flurry of new conferences, papers, letters and communiqués on the Grenada Revolution and its tragic demise. Following the September release of the Seven, things picked up pace. Thankfully, many of the letters on the ubiquitous websites and email circuits, particularly those written by Grenadians, suggested wariness with the recriminatory monologues that have been typical of many reflections on the tragedy. Understandably, all commentaries did not comply with this tone. This chapter revisits the 1983 crisis and collapse of the Grenada Revolution and the various narratives which shape the discourse.

This chapter analyzes Dionne Brand’s poetry collection, Chronicles of the Hostile Sun (1984), and her novel In Another Place, Not Here (1996). While Chronicles pinpoints the misrepresentation of the Grenada Revolution in anti-revolutionary narratives emanating from American imperialism, In Another Place highlights how structures of healing and alternative epistemologies of black radicalism are developed between queer women who are on the margins of both the postcolonial Caribbean nation and the revolution intended to subvert American imperialist forces. Brand’s writing interrogates the black radical tradition in search of a radical feminist politics that can account for gender and sexuality alongside race and class.

Many of the theoretical assumptions and tactical approaches of the Grenada revolution were rooted in the experiences of early twentieth century Russia. The internal debates within the Grenada Revolution largely ignored the pre-and post-Stalin theoretical debates within Communism, and showed little awareness of original Caribbean Marxist thought. This was reflected in the limited impact of the Caribbean’s foremost Marxist theoretician, C.L.R. James, on the revolutionary process in Grenada, despite the fact that James’ theoretical contributions addressed concerns which bore direct relevance to the later implosion of the Grenada Revolution, and to a post-Stalinist global Marxism. This chapter therefore seeks to apply the theoretical insights of C.L.R. James to understanding the lessons of the collapse of the Grenada Revolution and in pointing the way towards the possibilities of a future anti-systemic project in the Caribbean.

This chapter argues that the Grenada Revolution did not meet the requirements for a social revolution with a working class character. Grenada, like most other Caribbean societies, simply lacked the foundation—material and otherwise—to build socialism, as there did not exist the deep inner structures of capital in science, technology, industry, finance, production and labor to achieve and/or sustain a social revolution. The crisis and collapse of the “Grenada Revolution” and the roles played by the “Grenada revolutionaries” relative to how they attempted to apply certain concepts from Marxism-Leninism and from Soviet ideology on the “Non-Capitalist” path to development had a great deal to do with the authoritarian political culture that survived British colonialism and imperialism through decolonization and independence. Marxism-Leninism complicated the process but was not necessary for the Grenada revolutionary experiment to collapse.

The politics of most Caribbean Left parties were influenced by the experience of the Grenada Revolution and its ultimate demise. This chapter examines the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) of Guyana, one of the parties with close ties to the New Jewel Movement (NJM), the party that led the revolution. The chapter looks at the relationship between the NJM and WPA before and during the revolution, including the impact of the revolution on the WPA’s fight against the Forbes Burnham-led People’s National Congress (PNC) dictatorship in Guyana. Finally, it draws a connection between the demise of the revolution in October, 1983, and the shift in the WPA’s tactics and strategy in the period following the demise.

In the last decades of the twentieth century, the Caribbean saw multiple and dramatic political efforts to transform state and society. New governments sought to embrace popular classes as equal members of society as almost never before and to create unprecedented forms of equality, both economically and culturally. This chapter explores three such attempts at transformation: Jamaica under Michael Manley, Maurice Bishop and the Grenada Revolution, and Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s first government in Haiti. Unlike the Cuban Revolution, these leaders excited expectations for change within still mostly capitalist economies. Manley and Aristide led democratic governments, while Grenada sustained one-party rule. The outcomes of reform efforts in these three nations varied from enduring progress to poignant tragedy. The chapter explores the powerful challenges these new Caribbean governments faced, domestic and foreign, economic and political. It shows how after the English-speaking Caribbean gained independence in the 1960s and 1970s, their trajectories began to overlap with that of the older independent Caribbean, as national sovereignty made them suddenly more vulnerable to the region’s predominant twentieth-century empire, the United States.

This chapter recounts the tragic murder of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and his associates, as well as the subsequent invasion of Grenada. It claims that there is significant evidence of a comfortable mutual sharing of leadership between Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard and Bishop, contrary to the portrayal of Coard as resentful of his deputy leader status. It also states that Selwyn Strachan, minister of mobilization, was promoting Bishop's cause in 1983, further dismissing the notion of conspiracy regarding the latter's death. The chapter disputes three statements made by Barbadian lawyer Robert Clarke: (1) Bernard Coard was made deputy prime minister through his wife Phyllis's radio announcement; (2) the Organisation for Revolutionary Education and Liberation (OREL) conspiracy proposition; and (3) the ideological disparity between Bishop and Coard.

This chapter offers personal reflections on the forty years since the upsurge of Black Power in the Caribbean. Four nodal points of the period are examined from the perspective of an analysis of radical politics in the Caribbean: the Rodney events of 1968 in Jamaica; the 1970 Black Power uprising in Trinidad and Tobago; the period of PNP government in Jamaica under Michael Manley; and the rise and fall of the Grenada Revolution. The chapter assesses the significant but ambiguous impact that the Caribbean Black Power movement had on subsequent social and political events in the region. It argues that the Caribbean movement must be located within the broader global wave of resistance of the late 1960s as part of a wave of anti-systemic insurrection that challenged the authority of dominant states and systems.