The Grenada Revolution: What Really Happened?

by Bernard Coard

“A PAGE-TURNING WHO-DONE-IT. A MUST READ!” (Horace Levy, Sociologist, University Lecturer, Civil Society activist and Journalist, Jamaica) Finally, the inside honest, self-critical, and based on a wealth of credible and independent documentation. Bernard Coard reveals in dramatic detail the factors, forces and personalities which cumulatively led to deepening crisis within the Grenada Revolution and ultimately to wholesale tragedy. Bernard Coard, United States and British trained economist and university lecturer, played a leading role in the NJM and in the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada. His experience, including 26 years as a political prisoner, offers a unique insight into the causes, course, and finally the implosion of the Revolution.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

370 pages, Paperback

Published June 29, 2017

Reviews

[Bhaskar Sunkara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written, surprisingly self-critical, and generally rings true. Never fully grasps that the contradiction of the revolutionary crisis in Grenada was a crisis of the party-state model itself.

[Ranjeet Brar · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Grenadan revolution has fascinated me for several reasons.

1. I was just 8 when it won power and 12 when it was overthrown, so knew of it mainly from reading second hand accounts.

2. Although a tiny country with just 100,000 inhabitants, it had a far wider significance as the first English speaking country to embark on the socialist revolution, and it's close connection both with the wider Caribbean and also England (especially London, where I live).

3. I've read a book of Maurice bishops speeches and they are inspiring, giving mutch insight into the revolutionary history of the Caribbean, the New jewel movement (the Marxist-Leninist party to which both Bishop and Coard belonged), the economic plans of advancement for Grenada following the overthrow of the Gairy dictatorship, and US destabilisation of the revolution, via regional press (Carricom, an arm of US information agency, an arm of the huge state apparatus and closely linked to the CIA) and military threats including the infamous dress rehearsals for invasion.

4. I've read Bernard Coard's book "hows the west Indian child is made educationally subnormal by the English school system" which is excellent and draws on detailed and widespread sources to expose institutionalised racism in London's schools (anyone who takes the concept of the IQ test too seriously should read it). It's from the late 60s / early 70s but still has relevance today.

5. I've read some of Chris Searle's material on Grenada's revolution.

6. I've read an interview of Fidel Castro's on the fall of the revolution.

What is clear is that

A. The revolution was inspiring, brought concrete benefits to the Grenadan people, and was a broad mass movement. It was by no means a movement and revolution without great success and great lessons to teach us. It was viewed by the USA as enough of a threat for Regan to declare it a national enemy and, eg, accuse it's airport redevelopment (greatly aided by CUBA and also by investment from European countries) of being a Soviet military base.

B. In the great tempo of work, and with a surprisingly small circle of revolutionaries, much was achieved, but exacerbated by a mixture of fatigue and failure to grow the party organisation (there were plenty of candidates to draw upon), personal differences were allowed to become deep Factional disputes within the leadership of the new jewel movement. Coard evidently felt he should be joint leader (a position which in fact he occupied, de facto) and was unhappy, perhaps even resentful and bitter that his comrades did not follow his methods and have his same work ethic). The rift among party members was apparently healed with the suggestion of joint leadership, but Maurice had misgivings. Maurice flouted this party decision - an apparently inexplicable occurrence, unkess the US had positioned itself to pour poison in his ear via CIA agents, perhaps even high ranking NJM members?

C. In the likely presence of agents provocateurs, the relationship between Bishop and Coard soured to the point that Coard (and the njm cc) had bishop placed under house arrest, sparking demonstrations among the masses for his release and allowing a rift to open up between the revolutionary masses and the revolutionary leadership.

D. In the midst of these demonstrations, a unit of the people's revolutionary army was sent to reclaim the principle fort at St George's, which had fallen to the demonstrators. That unit came under fire and returned it. Controversy still reigns about who died upon upon whom. Very likely the CIA had hand in it, but without access to their records, the exact truth of this will be hard to ascertain. In any event, the soldiers returned fire and captured the fort, firing upon the masses and then executing Maurice Bishop - the undoubted leader and inspire of the revolution. Several other NJM leaders and cc members also died in this internecine fighting, including Jacquline Creft, much loved minister for education.

The masses broke with the NJM and Regan used that opportunity to invade, overthrowing the remaining revolutionaries and enacting regime change.

Coard had always insisted that he would never speak about the events that led to this sorry ending of an otherwise inspiring episode in the history of the carribean peoples for liberation from colonialism and it's legacy of poverty and racism.

Unsurprisingly, he tells his side of the story, and it must be seen as a self-serving account. He offers some manner of self criticism for resigning from the central Cttee and political cttee, the guiding centres of the revolution, but still criticises other party members as having the major part to play in the dispute, and gives no definitive account of the fighting.

He ends confused and without direction, a wretched figure in the wreckage of the movement he has had such a hand in shaping - and then destroying.

He promises several further books on the events of the US invasion and his prison reflections and educational experiences.

We all have much to learn from this. That the tremendous pressure brought to bear on a revolutionary people by imperialism show that the day of the revolution is but the beginning of a long and complex struggle, in which the struggle intensifies, rather than subsides. That organisation is the only weapon we posts, and In particular, as Stalin said in his funeral oration to Lenin: "going from us, Comrade Lenin urged us to guard our party unity as we would the apple of our eye"

[George Watson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Excuses, excuses.

Bernard Coard is responsible for the murder of the Grenada Revolution and its leader Maurice Bishop. Decades later, after years and years behind bars, he has almost nothing new to say about what exactly happened.

I couldn't put the book down because I am passionate about the topic. But it left me feeling very dirty.

[Richmond Apore · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s not every day that one can say a book they read insulted their intelligence. Bernard Coard, in this book, not only does that but goes a step further—assuming you, the reader, are bereft of discernment, a blank canvas onto which he can paint his disingenuous, self-serving recollections to distort the disastrous outcome of his ill-fated and selfish power grab of 1983. That is, personally being responsible for killing off the Grenadian Revolution by setting in motion the cascade that took the life of the very personification of the Revolution—Maurice Bishop.

Do you know what’s even the tragedy of it all? After spending close to 30 years in prison—and no doubt hundreds of hours reflecting on his actions in those fateful weeks—Coard finally decided this is what he wants history and we, historians, to remember him by: these words and what he has written here. Which isn’t even a memoir. Not a reckoning. Not even a reluctant guilty man’s, or worse, wrongly accused man’s belated confession. It is simply a 370-page smokescreen—self-serving, charmingly manipulative, disingenuously and selectively sourced, and riddled with the kind of circular logic that assumes the reader is too daft or uninformed to catch the author’s agenda-of-hand.

For crying out loud, you're Bernard Coard. Your rise to fame—sardonically speaking—is being universally listed as responsible for Maurice Bishop's killing in 1983. So tell us: for a book you titled “The Grenada Revolution: What Really Happened,” why are you—on the very first chapter of the first page—talking about U.S. President Reagan and the U.S. allegedly plotting to invade Grenada long before 1983? Such desperate framing and pivoting to external factors even before talking about the NJM or yourself. Then, in the very next chapter, he talks about the Cubans—that they misled the Grenadian army with the wrong approach to a likely future U.S. invasion. I couldn’t help but laugh in disbelief. There’s no way this man is already laying a foundation to excuse his later actions before even discussing internal Grenadian politics, as if the NJM leadership—himself and Bishop included—were hapless pawns with no autonomy, mere subjects of American scheming and the “ineffective counsel” of Cuba, right?

Nevertheless, let’s get to the heart of the matter—where Coard fully unravels himself. He ends the book by suggesting Maurice Bishop was not assassinated by a planned firing squad ordered from above (as universally cited, and no less than the head of the firing squad himself—Lieutenant Callistus Bernard—alleges), but rather, that Bishop was shot dead by “grief-stricken” soldiers acting out of emotional trauma after the death of their highly popular colleague, Officer Cadet Conrad Mayers, when the armoured vehicles from Fort Frederick arrived at Fort Rupert to take back control from Bishop supporters. This—this—is his actual final argument. That the soldiers, broken by the loss of a comrade, just snapped, lined up Maurice Bishop, Jacqueline Creft, Norris Bain, Unison Whiteman and others, and executed them at Fort Rupert. Incredible.

And that’s it. No names. No disciplinary action. No tribunal. No public account. Just an alleged emotional eruption that conveniently eliminated the revolution’s most popular figure and his closest allies in the span of minutes—and nobody was ever punished for it. Not even a slap on the wrist. In fact, Hudson Austin—Coard’s chosen military successor—went on radio to claim they died in crossfire. A lie so bald it didn’t even cover its own shame. But apparently, we’re meant to believe this all happened without any coordination, authorization, or post-mortem justice from the same Central Committee that had arrested Bishop just days before. Really?

So let me ask: if no order was given, why were those responsible not arrested? If you (Coard) truly believe they acted on their own—grief or no grief—why didn’t you, Hudson Austin, or anyone in the CC take immediate steps to isolate, name, or reprimand them? You didn’t, because you couldn’t. Because doing so would blow apart the entire defense you’ve spent this book stitching together.

And it gets worse. Coard never discusses why Hudson Austin suddenly took over the country mere minutes after the killings. Almost like a coup, no? No reflection. No explanation. No remorse. Bishop is dead, Austin steps up, and Coard conveniently fades back into the shadows of the narrative. The entire final act of this book is written like a man gaslighting history.

And then there’s the disgusting attempt to assassinate Bishop’s character in death. Coard casually throws in that Bishop was unfaithful, had a child with Jacqueline Creft, was a chain smoker, was mentally weak and allegedly manipulated by George Louison, and was a political puppet of the Cubans. None of this adds anything to the core narrative. It is character assassination disguised as backstory. What’s next—Maurice Bishop didn’t recycle? This is not a political memoir—it’s the literary equivalent of putting a knife in Bishop’s back again, decades after the bullets already silenced him.

It’s all part of Coard’s calculated manipulation of the reader. He knows very well that over 90% of readers picking up this book know who Bishop is—and hold him in great positive acclaim. So, to make Bishop’s later killing more palatable, the “myth” of the man must be stripped first. Yet he, Coard, must clearly have been an infallible creature—because while Bishop’s laundry, and that of his closest associates who were also killed—Vince, Bain, and Unison—was publicly aired, the deeds and character of Coard and the rest of the “Grenada-17” were never mentioned. Surely that’s just coincidence, right? Bishop is exposed as an adulterer, Vince as lazy and corrupt, and Unison as depressed and womanizing, yet Coard’s fellow defendants—Hudson Austin, Liam James, and Stelly—are all spoken of in glowing, noble terms. Again, this man just took us readers for fools.

And let’s talk about the “Joint Leadership” nonsense. Nowhere in Marxist-Leninist theory or practice does a state leader “share power” with another party member because of internal disputes. You don’t get to undermine democratic centralism with a power-sharing gimmick just because your bureaucratic clique wants in. Yet Coard tries to tell us that this wasn’t even his idea—that he was just a passive participant in a proposal from others (Liam James, etc.) and only accepted it reluctantly. But if you really didn’t want it, why didn’t you withdraw the demand when the country was paralyzed for four days, protestors were flooding the streets, and Bishop was under house arrest? You didn’t stop it, Bernard. You stood by and watched it spiral—and when it exploded, you wiped your fingerprints and called it a tragedy, blaming everyone but never yourself.

And the cherry on top? At the end of the book, Coard includes a note saying he did not use certain testimonies—I read this to mean particularly those implicating the leadership in giving the execution order—because they were made “under duress.” But then, throughout the book—especially regarding October 19th—he quotes unnamed, unverifiable people: a nursing trainee, a mother of six, etc., who all just happen to support his version of events on that day. The one key testimony that does accuse the leadership directly—Callistus Bernard’s? He mentions his name several times but never once engages with what Bernard said. You don’t get to hide behind “duress” when you’re curating anonymous quotes with zero scrutiny, Mr. Coard.

Coard wants to sell this book as the “truth” of the Grenadian Revolution. But every page reveals the opposite: a man who wants redemption without responsibility, clarity without confession, and authority without accountability. He blames Bishop (for daring to refuse pressure from a clique in the party to share power). He blames the Cubans (for daring to support Bishop despite him being the very embodiment of the Grenadian Revolution, as Fidel was to the Cuban one). He blames the Americans. He blames Tom Adams (former PM of Barbados). He even blames some random “Indian fella” allegedly seen with a gun at Fort Rupert and, per Coard, the one who killed Officer Cadet Mayers and hence triggered Bishop’s death. Everyone, it seems, shares the blame—except the man writing the book, whose hands remain conveniently clean throughout. He is just a blameless victim whose only “crime” was being asked by the Party to share power with Bishop. Priceless.

Let me be blunt: this book did not redeem Bernard Coard. It condemned him. Every page—every strained rationalization, every selective footnote, every hollow gesture at humility—deepened the suspicion that history had him right the first time. That Maurice Bishop trusted a man whose quiet ambition cloaked itself in party orthodoxy, who never once truly respected the will of the masses, and who, in the end, stood by as his comrades were butchered—then waited decades to write a book where he could once again kill them with ink. Incredible.

Save yourself the time. Read Maurice Bishop’s speeches. Read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report. Read Gary Williams. Read Hugh O’Shaughnessy. But unless you’re studying how guilt rewrites memory, skip this charade of a memoir.

I came into this book hoping to understand. I left it knowing exactly why history remembers Bernard Coard the way it does.

And if you ever get the chance to read my review here, Mr. Coard, know that some of us genuinely thought you were man enough—had enough integrity and conviction—to make peace with the truth of your actions (or lack thereof) on October 19th, 1983. If the truth of your actions was so damning to the legacy of your children and grandchildren that you thought it best to carry that to the grave, that’s fine. What isn’t fine is what you did in this book. Maurice Bishop’s children and grandchildren do not deserve how you selectively and disingenuously wrote out their patriarch—especially when your very actions prevented him from being here to call out your lies and character assassination.

I was not there in those fateful weeks. But from what I do know and have read of Maurice Bishop—a man who was clearly the very embodiment of the Revolution, a man who beat you out fair and square to become leader of the Party and later the country, a man who quickly won the admiration and personal affection of Fidel Castro—yes, that man—was not mentally weak or under the spell of George Louison or anyone else. To say that about someone you claim to have known since you two were twelve years old says far more about you than it ever will about him—and it only corroborates why history will always rightly identify you as the man who deliberately self-imploded the Grenadian Revolution.

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 1 out of 5]

"In Cuba, ever since the Grenadian crisis began, we have called Coard's group--to give it a name--the 'Pol Pot group'"--Fidel Castro: Nothing Can Stop the Course of History: Interview by Jeffrey M. Elliot and Mervyn M. Dymally.

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 19th 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."

That's a brief excerpt from 'New International no 6: The Second Assassination of Maurice Bishop is a wonderful collection of 27 speeches and interviews and includes the public speech he gave in New York in June 1983, which I was fortunate enough to be present for. It also includes the major Cuban government statements in the immediate aftermath of the overturn and imperialism's fast victory following it. “If Bishop had been alive leading the people,” Castro said, “it would have been very difficult for the United States to orchestrate the political aspects of its intervention....")

During many of the years when Bishop had been leading the people of Grenada in struggle, Bernard Coard was a "professor of Marxism" safe in Jamaica, where he was a member of what became the pro-Moscow Workers Party of Jamaica. His Stalinist training served him well for his role in destroying the revolution. The Cuban Revolution had also faced a similar type Stalinist faction, led by Anibal Escalante, but Fidel Castro's revolutionary faction managed to overcome them, early in the revolution (see Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro and Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: A Marxist Appreciation).

This entire book consists of a smokescreen to divert the reader’s attention from the real issues. He keeps insisting that the revolution took place at the height of the Cold War. Really? He finally gets around to mentioning that the US had been defeated in Vietnam and was leery of trying to use large scale military intervention. He doesn’t mention the international antiwar movement, based in the United States, but his remarks show that he’s aware of it.

To expect revolution to happen without a threat of counterrevolution is absurd. To think that Reagan represented anything fundamentally different from the liberal Democrat Kennedy the Cubans had to deal with is, at best naïve. One thing is clear, the New Jewel Movement leaders spent far too much time talking to ex-CIA operatives. I’m not questioning the intentions of such people, but they essentially maintain the same framework they had as CIA—conspiracy theories. The role of the masses in political decision making is non-existent in their thinking.

Coard speaks of the Cubans acting in a commandist manner, but I frankly I don’t believe him; Coard is the one who consistently acted in this manner, and I think he's projecting. People should read the two carefully researched books on Cuba’s intervention in Africa by Piero Gleijeses to see how Cuba functions with other countries they’re assisting. Was it perhaps some Cubans acting incorrectly? Possible… until he tells the reader that he went over the heads of the Cuban advisers in Grenada and was told that the “orders” came from Raúl Castro. Now I’m certain that he’s lying, and he hopes to get away with it, because there’s not a shred of evidence presented except his word.

But in any event, the whole scenario Coard presents is false. He argues that the Cubans were wrong in expecting an army of exiles like the Contras, and that Bishop reluctantly supported them. And that that’s why Grenada was unprepared he argues. As I say, I'm sure he’s lying about the role of the Cubans, but in any case, this is only useful if you believe that the revolution was overthrown by US imperialism. It wasn’t! it was overthrown from within by Coard and his faction! First, he arrested the best loved leader of the revolution. Since this was a revolution, and not a coup, the masses responded massively and correctly in assembling in the largest demonstration in the history of Grenada, and freeing Bishop. Sure, Bishop noted a few counterrevolutionaries in the crowd, but that was totally secondary. Coard condemns of what he called the “herd psychology” of a large crowd—referring to the massive Oct. 19 1983 popular mobilization to free Bishop. This act was the masses acting in their own interest, and that’s what a revolution is! Regardless of who gave the orders, Bishop and many of the leaders who supported him were shot; no one has ever revealed where their bodies are buried, and then having failed to keep Bishop in prison, he imprisoned the whole population of Grenada with a curfew. There was nothing left of the revolution when Reagan invaded. Coard’s work is the action of someone who has total contempt for the masses. He views the working class like Hillary Clinton does, as “deplorables” who need to be taught what’s good for us. This is the training Coard received from what became the Stalinist Jamaica Workers Party... Then he goes on to slander Cuba more, to slander every leader who supported Bishop....

This is a book of gossip and slander, very little of which can be proven or disproven. Today it seems that as few people on the "left" as on the "right" are interested in facts that can be proven. That's why I'm not part of "the left," but part of the working class, which must proceed from facts. One fact is that while he accuses Fidel of what the bourgeois and petty bourgeois critics all accuse him of, one man rule, Fidel is gone, and Revolutionary Cuba is still there.

I'm sure a few academics and other middle-class leftists will like his book, but the working class of Grenada, and of the Grenadian diaspora in Brooklyn, NY, London, UK, and elsewhere, have shown that they want nothing to do with Bernard Coard.

[Vincent Amanor-Boadu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gripping story of how big things happen from very small things, the proverbial little drops of water make a mighty ocean...

All decisions are individual. This very personal explanation of what happened to scuttle the Grenada revolution of 1979-1983 by someone very inside it exemplifies the importance of understanding the important role of microeconomic decision making and its macroeconomic outcomes. It also provides a case study of the power of the mob in achieving huge outcomes. The sad story is rust in this case as in many other individual cases, the partners who build also author the destruction of their edifice. Mr. Costs has given us more than a story about Grenada and its revolution. Each of the characters, Fidel Castro, Ronald Reagan, regional leaders, individual party members, soldiers and civilians, big and small, all show how personal interest and passions cause human actions with telling impacts.

[Arya Pascall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written account from what happened on one's perspective. Took me a while to finish read, however i enjoyed the little knowledge of the revolution.