IN NOBODY S BACKYARD: Maurice Bishop's Speeches, 1979-1983: A Memorial Volume
Maurice Bishop's significance goes far beyond Grenada, and his ideas - in the company of other Third World martyrs like Allende, Cabral and Mondlane - will live on long after his death. Concerned always to educate, he speaks not just to Grenadians and West Indians, but to all black and working people and the oppressed of the Third World. By turns analytical, moving, amusing, his thinking ranges over the world capitalist crisis and its impact, imperialism and its distorting effects on the media, cultural sovereignty, the law, women, the struggle against unemployment, U.S. destabilization and Caribbean history.
The introduction by Richard Hart is a portrait of the revolution, placing it in its historical context within the Caribbean as a whole. Hart draws on the Minutes of the Central Committee and his own personal knowledge to tell the story of the life and tragic death of the Revolution, and how the divisions in the leadership of the New Jewel Movement paved the way for the US. invasion and destruction of the Caribbean's most profound rupture with imperialism since the Cuban Revolution of 1959.
Richard Hart became Grenada's Attorney General in 1982 and left the island following the U.S. invasion of October 1983. A veteran of the Caribbean struggle, he was a founder member of Jamaica's nationalist movement, was detained by the British in the 1940s and is the author of Slaves Who Abolished Slavery, a major account of the resistance to slavery in the Caribbean.
Chris Searle, the editor, is an English writer, teacher and poet who worked in revolutionary Grenada for two years and helped to establish Fedon Publishers, the Revolution's publishing house. He is the author
of Grenada: The Struggle Against Destabilization (Writers and Readers, 1983) and Words Unchained: Language and Revolution in Grenada (Zed Books, 1984).
‘The name, Maurice Bishop will blossom into one of the most fertilising symbols of creative expression in the culture and politics of the region.' George Lamming
Contents:
-Editor’s Preface
-Introduction — Richard Hart
-Maurice Bishop Lives — George Lamming
-A Bright New Dawn
-In Nobody’s Backyard
-Organise to Fight Destabilisation
-Beat Back Destabilisers
-New Martyrs, New Patriots
-Health for All — A Right of the Caribbean Masses
-Education is a Must!
-Work Towards Integrated Agricultural Development and Regional Co-operation
-ln the Spirit of Butler, Unionise! Mobilise! Educate! Democratise!
-Emulation is the Seed that Brings the Fruit of Excellence
-Forward to 1982 — the Year of Economic Construction
-Not One Human Right Has Ever Been Won Without Struggle
-Turn the Words Around!
-Fight Unemployment Through Production!
-Heirs of Marryshow
-One Caribbean!
-For the Cultural Sovereignty of the Caribbean People!
-Long Live the Women of Free Grenada!
-‘Every Grain of Sand is Ours!’
-Forward to Peace, Genuine Independence and Development in a United America — Our America!
-We Proudly Share the Noble Dreams of Martin and Malcolm
-Appendix 1: Fascism: A Caribbean Reality?
-Appendix 2: ‘We Have the Right to Build Our Country After Our Own Likeness’
Comments
For a far more critical view
For a far more critical view see Fundi's comments;
From Hart's intro, the usual
From Hart's intro, the usual crap leninist concepts;
In light of the US armed suppression of Bishop's government the last sentence is a bit unconsciously ironic.
Interesting. I just read
Interesting. I just read Gerald Horne's Cold War in a Hot Zone: The United States Confronts Labor and Independence Struggles in the British West Indies. It centers on the Caribbean Labour Congress (CLC) and the labor struggles of the late 40s and early 50s. Horne argues the CLC tried to push the careerist union bureaucrats left for a unified BWI. Instead many of the bureaucrats became entrenched and moved right while leading their respective countries. Horne attributes the fall of the CLC, and the Caribbean left, partially to imperialism and the coup of Cheddi Jagan in 1953.
The same Richard Hart that wrote the intro to this book also helped led the CLC from 1946-53 and was part of the People's Revolutionary Government in Grenada. This is mainly why I seeked out the book. Though in his intro he is a strong proponent of the ML party, his analysis of the flaws of the New Jewel Movement could easily be used to argue against the ML party entirely. It's worth engaging with.
The start of his intro, The Improbable Revolution, presents a brief materialist analysis: the number of persons engaged in agriculture on their own account exceeded the number so engaged for wages. Many of those working for wages will also have had farms of their own. Grenada probably has the highest percentage of individual peasant proprietors in the English-speaking Caribbean area.
Hart continues: The revolutionary leaders never described the Revolution as ‘socialist’, nor did they advocate a precipitate transition to socialism. They were agreed that a mixed economy would be appropriate for Grenada’s stage of development for some considerable time.
This seems more along the lines of a kind of Bourgeois revolution in Marxist terms. The New Jewel Movement's failure to organize and educate people, the tiny membership of the party, the internal struggle over leadership all lead to the downfall makes a strong case for alternative ways of organizing.
Thanks for the info on Fundi. Gonna listen to that recording. Good points he makes though he was organizing in Jamaica and the material conditions of Grenada were different. Yes Grenada is a tiny island but they still need an airport, rely on exports and not nearly as developed as Jamaica etc.
I'm gonna check out his collection Workers' Self-Management in the Caribbean. Noticed the collection was edited by Matthew Quest, who has written a lot of interesting stuff on CLR James too.
https://libcom.org/library/silences-suppression-workers-self-emancipation-historical-problems-clr-jamess-interpreta
I will now remember "People's
I will now remember "People's Revolutionary Government" for their true commitment to a mixed economy, by returning the worker-run coke plan to the owners...
Richard Hart wrote another
Richard Hart wrote another pamphlet on his time in Grenada http://www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk/?p=303
Its very odd since while it is extremely pro NJM and very positive of Maurice Bishop at the start it argues the accusations against Bishop were largely true making him seem like a real danger and uncontrolled person, and the pamphlet's reason for publication was to protest the treatment of the imprisoned NJM leaders who killed him, and raise money for their defence appeals.
He talks about the NJMs desires to restore parliamentary government, their commitment to a mixed economy, etc. He even talks about how there was two powerful businessmen in the cabinet, how their investment law was being updated to attract foreign investment and how they would give interest free loans to large rural estates to stop them going under and details the time the NJM broke up a successful workers co-op at the Coca cola plant and gave it back to the franchise holder as good things proving their revolutionary commitments.
There's also a contradiction throughout that pamphlet that honestly make Hart difficult to take seriously, the first chapters are focussed on the mass meetings in Grenada and how great they were and how the NJM had no control over them and how they were far more democratic and participatory then the typical parliamentary system.
And on how Bishop and the NJM were dedicated to reviving an ordinary multi party parliamentary system. He's talking about this to demolish accusations that Bishop and the NJM were dictators but by putting these two features side by side there is a pretty important question that Hart seemed completely disinterested in. If these mass meetings were as effective as Hart claims, what possible justification could they have for replacing it with this obviously inferior system?
Hart doesn't seem to be a person of strong critical faculties, he talks about how great Bishop was up till he was overthrown, then his killers are great and the evidence for the positive developments of the Grenadian revolution are things that are usually brought up in denunciation.
See right here, Hart's account in his later pamphlet is largely the same, its complete logical tongue twisting. "The PRG respects workers rights more than property, as proven by the time they compelled aggrieved workers who were successfully running a business back to its franchise holder, despite opposition from those workers, because it [the government] had determined that the cause for the dispute had ended and its economic policies required good relations with private capital and international corporations".
You can argue its a pragmatic compromise or whatever but I do not see how anyone could look at that episode and see respect for workers rights being the main lesson to take away from it.
As always: the leninist state
As always: the leninist state knows the workers' interests better than the workers themselves.