"A PAGE-TURNING WHO-DONE-IT. A MUST READ!" (Horace Levy, Sociologist, University Lecturer, Civil Society activist and Journalist, Jamaica) Finally, the inside story: 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.

Grenada experienced much turmoil in the 1970s and 1980s, culminating in an armed Marxist revolution, a bloody military coup, and finally in 1983 Operation Urgent Fury, a United States-led invasion. Wendy C. Grenade combines various perspectives to tell a Caribbean story about this revolution, weaving together historical accounts of slain Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, the New Jewel Leftist Movement, and contemporary analysis. There is much controversy. Though the Organization of American States formally requested intervention from President Ronald Reagan, world media coverage was largely negative and skeptical, if not baffled, by the action, which resulted in a rapid defeat and the deposition of the Revolutionary Military Council. By examining the possibilities and contradictions of the Grenada Revolution, the contributors draw upon thirty years' of hindsight to illuminate a crucial period of the Cold War. Beyond geopolitics, the book interrogates but transcends the nuances and peculiarities of Grenada's political history to situate this revolution in its larger Caribbean and global context. In doing so, contributors seek to unsettle old debates while providing fresh understandings about a critical period in the Caribbean's postcolonial experience. This collection throws into sharp focus the centrality of the Grenada Revolution, offering a timely contribution to Caribbean scholarship and to wider understanding of politics in small developing, postcolonial societies.

In 1979, the Marxist-Leninist New Jewel Movement under Maurice Bishop overthrew the government of the Caribbean island country of Grenada, establishing the People’s Revolutionary Government. The United States under President Reagan infamously invaded Grenada in 1983, staying until the New National Party won election, effectively dealing a death blow to socialism in Grenada. With Comrade Sister, Laurie Lambert offers the first comprehensive study of how gender and sexuality produced different narratives of the Grenada Revolution. Reimagining this period with women at its center, Laurie Lambert shows how the revolution must be recognized for its both productive and corrosive tendencies. Lambert argues that the literature of the Grenada Revolution exposes how the more harmful aspects of revolution are visited on, and are therefore more apparent to, women. Calling attention to the mark of black feminism on the literary output of Caribbean writers of this period, Lambert addresses the gap between women’s active participation in Caribbean revolution versus the lack of recognition they continue to receive.

The 1979 Grenada Revolution, orchestrated by the New Jewel Movement, culminated four-and-a-half years later in the execution of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and the US-led military invasion which threw Grenada onto the international political stage. Though much has been written on the Revolution and its untimely and violent demise, the overwhelming majority of the authors have been non-Grenadian. All the contributors to this volume, except one, are Grenadian. In this regard, it is unique, and captures the voices of persons who were active participants, children, teenagers, young adults, and some yet unborn in the 1979 to 1983 period, illustrative of the continued influence of the Revolution on Grenadians. The essays examine the legality of the Revolution, the historical connections between it and the 1795 Fédon’s Rebellion, the nation’s collective memory of the Revolution by its second generation, the conflict between religion and the Revolution, the empowerment of women by the revolutionary process, and the role of poetry and art in raising salient and often difficult and painful aspects of the Revolution. This collection of essays captures the Revolution from a Grenadian perspective.

On March 13th 1979, West Indians were stunned as they awoke to the news of the first successful revolution in the English Speaking Caribbean. Four and a half years later the revolution succumbed to tragedy and US military invasion. This extraordinary book is the first to give the inside story of the thinking, the internal debates, concrete plans and actions of the Grenadian revolutionary leaders as they both responded to events unfolding in the 1970's and sought to shape them. The different and distinct personalities of the political and military leaders of the revolution come to life, as the author, from his personal knowledge as a young patriot himself, narrates the events of the period and the roles of the various leaders in them. Students of Grenadian and Caribbean history, politics and sociology will find this not only a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable read, but an indispensable reference work. Anyone, moreover, who wishes to understand the seeds of both the remarkable achievements of the Grenada Revolution and of its implosion, will also need to study this book carefully. Written in a direct, simple, engaging and at times poetic style, the ordinary citizen of Grenada, the Caribbean region, and the West Indian Diaspora will find it impossible to put this book down once the first page is read.

Why did the world's strongest power intervene militarily in the tiny Commonwealth Caribbean island of Grenada in October 1983? This book focuses on United States-Grenada relations between 1979 and 1983 set against the wider historical context of US-Caribbean Basin relations. It presents an in-depth study of US policy during the Carter and Reagan presidencies and the deterioration of relations with the Marxist-Leninist People's Revolution Government (PRG) of Grenada. It considers in detail the murderous internal power struggle that destroyed the PRG and the decisionmaking process that resulted in a joint US-Caribbean military intervention.

Historically, revolution has been one of the principal means of founding a new state. But can this new state have any moral legitimacy, born as it is out of violence? That is the critical question for legal theorists. The late Hans Kelsen, arguably one of the leading legal theorists and philosophers of the twentieth century, in his Pure Theory of Law, articulated this theory of revolutionary legality as a part of his general theory of law. Kelsen in the Grenada Court: Essays on Revolutionary Legality examines revolutionary legality in the context of the Grenada coup d'etat of March 1979, which brought the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) to power. The 1973 Constitution was suspended, the executive authority of the country changed, parliament was reconstituted and a new Supreme Court established. The governing principles of political life in Grenada were transformed. The PRG had established a new legality. The courts however, were confronted with questions of their validity and jurisdictional competence. Called upon to judge the validity of the PRG regime, the issue of the validity of the courts was also called into question. Following the demise of the PRG regime in sensational fashion, culminating in the invasion of Grenada by the US army in 1983, the validity of the court was again challenged. This collection of clear, readily understood essays, shows that the Court determined its own validity as a matter of necessity. Using examples from around the Commonwealth, the case of Bernard Coard & Ors. v. The Attorney General, known popularly as the Maurice Bishop murder trial, or the Grenada Thirteen, McIntosh criticizes the Grenada Court and its handling of the subject of revolutionary legality; while addressing Kelsen's theory of continuity and discontinuity of law and the doctrine of necessity.

In Part 1 of this book, Dr. Schoenhals places the Grenadian Revolution and its aftermath in historical perspective. He explores the Anglo-French rivalry over the island, the period of slavery, and the British colonial administration and gives particular emphasis to the Gairy decades (1951-1979). His discussion of the People's Revolutionary Government is based on extensive Interviews with the leadership of the New Jewel Movement, foreign diplomats, and Grenadian citizens, and on a review of documents captured by the United States during occupation of the island. In Part 2, Dr. Melanson, after briefly reviewing the nature of U.S. interests In the region and U.S.-Caribbean relations during the Nixon years, focuses on the Carter and Reagan administrations' policies in the Caribbean and relations with the Grenadian government. He examines the justification offered by President Reagan for the 1983 intervention, domestic responses to the action in the United States, and its implications for Reagan's Central American policies. Finally, he considers whether the action will prove to be a prelude to a new domestic consensus about the use of U.S. military power in the Third World.

The 1979 uprising that toppled Grenada's prime minister, Eric Gairy, was the first unconstitutional transfer of power to take place in the Commonwealth Caribbean. In turn, the 1983 invasion of Grenada was the first U.S. occupation of an English speaking Caribbean territory. Twelve essays address both specific features of the Grenada experience and broader theoretical issues that go to the heart of the dilemmas faced by many small developing societies today. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR