Maurice Rupert Bishop (29 May 1944 – 19 October 1983) was a Grenadian revolutionary, politician and the leader of the New JEWEL Movement (NJM), a party that sought to prioritise socio-economic development, education and true black liberation. The NJM came to power on 13 March 1979 and ushered in the Grenada revolution and installed the People's Revolutionary Government which removed Prime Minister Eric Gairy from office. Bishop headed the People's Revolutionary Government of Grenada (PRG) from 1979 to 1983. In October 1983, he was deposed as Prime Minister and executed during a coup engineered internally by Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard. This quickly led to the demise of the PRG.
Early life
Maurice Rupert Bishop was born on 29 May 1944 on the island of Aruba, then a colony of the Netherlands as part of the Territory of Curaçao. His parents, Rupert and Alimenta Bishop, came from the northeast of Grenada, where Rupert earned five British pence per day. At the end of 1930, to improve his financial position, Rupert moved with his wife Alimenta to Aruba so that he could work in the oil refinery.
Until the age of six, Maurice was raised in Aruba with two older sisters, Ann and Maureen. In 1950, his father took the family back to Grenada and opened a small retail shop in the capital, St. George's. Maurice was already quite tall at age nine and was teased because his height made him look much older. As an only son, Maurice was pushed hard by his father to excel. Rupert would demand perfect grades from Maurice. When the family purchased a car, his mother expected him to walk to school like the others. He was elected president of the Student Council, of the Discussion Club, and of the History Study Group, along with editing the newspaper Student Voice and participating in sports. As he recalled, "Here I had much interest in politics, history and sociology." He established contacts with students from the Anglican Grenada Boys' Secondary School, his own school's competitors.
"Bloody Sunday"
On 18 November 1973, Bishop and other leaders of the New Jewel Movement were driving in two cars from St George's to Grenville, where they were to meet with businessmen of the city. Police officers under Assistant Chief Constable Innocent Belmar overtook Bishop's motorcade. Nine people, including Bishop, were captured, arrested and beaten "almost to the point of death" by Belmar's police aides and by the paramilitary Mongoose Gang. In prison the arrested men shaved their beards, revealing Bishop's broken jaw. 18 November 1973 became known in Grenada as "Bloody Sunday". The perpetrators were members of the Mongoose Gang who took orders from Gairy and "carried out campaigns of terror ... against the New JEWEL Movement and against the Bishop family in particular." 21 January 1974 became known in Grenada as "Bloody Monday".
After this traumatising event, Bishop said, "we [the NJM] realized that we were unable to lead the working class" since the party had no influence in city workers' unions or among the rural folk loyal to Gairy. With his colleagues, Bishop developed a new strategy, shifting focus from propaganda and mobilising anti-government demonstrations toward the organisation of party groups and cells. He was taken to the Fort George prison. Police said that while searching his house they found weapons, ammunition, equipment and uniforms, along with a plan to assassinate Eric Gairy in a nightclub, and a scheme for setting up guerrilla camps. Two days later, Bishop was released on $125 bail, and fled briefly to North America.
Leader of the Opposition
In 1976, Bishop was elected to represent St. George's South-East in Parliament. From 1976 to 1979, he held the position of Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives of Grenada. As such, he challenged the government of Prime Minister Gairy and his Grenada United Labour Party (GULP), which maintained power by threat and intimidation and by fraudulent elections. In May 1977, Bishop made his first visit to Cuba. He travelled there with Unison Whiteman as leaders of the NJM and guests of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with People (ICAP). Under Bishop's leadership, the National Women's Organization was formed which participated in policy decisions along with other social groups. Women were given equal pay and paid maternity leave. Sex discrimination was made illegal. Organisations for education (Centre for Popular Education), health care, and youth affairs (National Youth Organization) were also established. Despite its achievements, Bishop's government would not hold elections and stifled the free press and the opposition.
Bishop has been quoted at length on the dynamics of democracy:
<blockquote>There are those ... who believe that you cannot have a democracy unless there is a situation where every five years ... people are allowed to put an "X" next to some candidate's name, and ... they return to being non-people without the right to say anything to their government, without any right to be involved in running their country. ...Elections could be important, but for us the question is one of timing. ...We would much rather see elections come when the economy is more stable, when the Revolution is more consolidated. When more people have in fact had benefits brought to them. When more people are literate ...The right of freedom of expression can really only be relevant if people are not too hungry, or too tired to be able to express themselves. It can only be relevant if appropriate grassroots mechanisms rooted in the people exist, through which the people can effectively participate. ...We talk about the human rights that the majority has never been able to enjoy, ... a job, to decent housing, to a good meal. ...These human rights have been the human rights for a small minority over the years in the Caribbean and the time has come for the majority of the people to begin to receive those human rights for the first time."</blockquote>
An anti-capitalist, Bishop believed in socialism one day replacing capitalism as the dominant mode of production, as he noted during an interview conducted in September 1983:<blockquote>it took several hundred years for feudalism to be finally wiped out and capitalism to emerge as the new dominant mode of production and it will take several hundred years for capitalism to be finally wiped out before socialism becomes the new dominant mode. The struggle is the same with our neighbours. Most people who are unprepared to accept any form of change not only resent it but resist it in very open forms. I think you are going to find that there will be this difficulty amongst some of the leadership in neighbouring territories. We think that the key is to get across the message to them that we pose no threat to them and we are not interested in toppling their governments. We are not interested in imposing what we believe on them, that is the first thing. Secondly, we do really want to engage in as many areas of co-operation as we can. I think we have demonstrated that in a million different ways. Wherever we go we struggle not just for Grenada but for either the OECS territory sub-regional grouping or the wider CARICOM.</blockquote>While Bishop had accomplishments to tout — free public healthcare, a drop in illiteracy from 35% to 5%, a drop in unemployment from 50% to 14% — his weak point was in promoting tourism to the island. It would be his last international speech. He defended Grenada's revolution, comparing it to the American Revolution and Emancipation Proclamation, and then spoke of "the continued economic subservience of the developing world, of the overthrow of Salvador Allende's government in Chile, and the brutal Contra interventions against the Sandinistas". When alluding to the adversarial stance of the Reagan administration toward Grenada, Bishop declared, "The real reason for all this hostility is because some perceive that what is happening in Grenada can lay the basis for a new socioeconomic and political path of development." According to Jacobin: