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Heirs to murdered Grenada leader keep policies alive

From

GREG CHAMBERLAIN

in St Georges

J The tiny first-floor office of the “Maurice Bishop and October 19 Martyrs’ Foundation” in a back street in St George’s is the only formal political relic left of Grenada’s four-year experiment with socialism. It was snuffed out first by the Grenadian Army and then by United States troops last October.

On a building opposite, the signboard of another organisation seems to taunt the defeated revolutionaries. “Salvation Army,” it

says. .. > 'Two.of Bishop’s Cabinet Ministers, who were not murdered along with him by their radical rivals in October, call at the foundation office most days. They are trying to keep the Left-wing alive in Grenada.

' “Some will say it’s not ideologially correct, but we can’t get away from making Maurice the centre of any new political organisation,” says George Louison, the former Agriculture Minister, purged by the radicals of the ruling New Jewel Movement a few days before the United States invasion. “The trauma is still great. Some people still break down and cry when they talk about him,” i Few Grenadians believe that Bishop's deputy, Bernard Coard, the leader of the score of radicals riow In prison accused of killing him, would reach the end of the street unmolested if he was released. *• Bishop's face is everywhere, on Tuhlrts, on posters in houses and shops. He is also hailed in graffiti oh Mills, alongside greetings -to the AtnWcan invaders. . . 'W . “The other day, someone came in

and asked me: ‘Do you think he’ll come back?’ ” says Peggy Nesfield, a former Government protocol officer and now helping to run the foundation, which sells books and posters and manages the money still coming in from sympathisers abroad. Bishop’s body has “disappeared” after reportedly being found by the Americans a few days after the invasion. His widow Angela has asked for it but the Americans are silent. Louison and the former Legal Affairs Minister, Kendrick Radix, have formed the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement (M.8.P.M.) and have launched a weekly news-

paper, “Indies Times,” which is outselling others of various political hues which have sprouted since the invasion. Bookshops still offer the old regime’s revolutionary literature. “In spite of everything, the society has not completely flipped,” says Louison. Although the MB.P.M. has broken with a socialdemocratic wing of the N.J.M., which includes Fenhis Augustine, former Grenadian High Commissioner in London, Louison does not hide his contempt for his former Leninist colleagues and their hardline supporters abroad. He has already given evidence against them.

“Few of the Coard faction really had their feet on the ground,” he says. “Coard brought most of them in straight from school and the group operated virtually like a religion. “Their thinking was unbelievably infantile at times. A few hours after Maurice had been executed, Selwyn Strachan (former Minister of Mobilisation and a leading Coard supporter) told me: ‘The workers’ revolution is here.’” Ten months after the invasion, the two sides still shun each other. “They’re just opportunists,” one pro-Coard former top official, whose neighbours only recently began talking to him again, said of the foundation and the new party. Another leading hardliner, Vai Cornwall, who ran the adult literacy programme and whose nowimprisoned husband, Leon, was ambassador to Cuba, minimises the deep scars of the in-fighting . which led to the regime’s ■ defeat ’ “Things in the party were a little tight” she concedes. “Links with ; the masses were not so good. But we were all in it. We should stick together in bad times like now.” ’ • Bishop’s heirs, led by Louison and Radix, may do better than expected in elections due later this year, especially in view of the vague policies of the other parties they would be lip against There is still good support for the Bishop cause among young Grenadians, few of whom criticise the mur•idered leader’s social reforms. Copyright — London Observer Ser vice. . ■’

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19840907.2.100

Bibliographic details

Press, 7 September 1984, Page 20

Word Count
650

Heirs to murdered Grenada leader keep policies alive Press, 7 September 1984, Page 20

Heirs to murdered Grenada leader keep policies alive Press, 7 September 1984, Page 20