The Grenadian Revolution, Part 2: The Rise of Gairyism (Trancript)

Gairy Returns

After years of societal tension in Grenada, everything would come to head in 1951 at an event now as the 1951 Revolution. The person who propelled this event was former primary school teacher name Eric Matthew Gairy.   

Eric Gairy was the son of a plantation overseer in the rural area of St. Andrew, Grenada. Throughout his teens he served as a primary school teacher and then in the early 1940’s he left Grenada to go work in Aruba in the oilfields of Lago Oil and Transport Company. However in 1949, he returned to Grenada after been deported from Aruba. Still, this work in Gairy’s favour because he had returned to Grenada in one of the island’s most definite historical moments. A moment where 98 percent of the farmers owned 53 percent of the land and 1.45 percent of the population owned 44.68 percent of the land. 

As such, one of the first things Gairy did upon his return home was defending a group of peasants. A Englishman, who recently bought an estate, “free of encumbrances”, decided to evict poor peasants who have been living on said estates for years. When they decided to organised around their right to be on the land, Gairy joined them. He would be vocal about the peasants receiving a compensation of 3000 pounds as stated under the Tenants’s Compensation Ordinance. This was effort was successful as this Englishman charge the sales agent with betrayal. With this activism, Gairy would be catapulted to fame among peasants.   

The Grenada Manual & Mental Workers Union

Going off this new found fame, in 1950, Gairy registered his new trade union: Grenada Manual and Mental Workers Union (GMMWU); with himself been styled as the union’s president-general. Immediately, he demanded a 50% wage increase for all sugar plantations at the Grenada Sugar Factory Ltd. Still, when his demand was rejected by authorities, Gairy organised a strike comprising of 496 workers. This strike was also supported by 430 peasants from surrounding estates. Soon, Gairy would also add to demand: a 20% wage increase for all workers on cocoa and nutmeg estates.  

 In retaliation, the government by grant a 25% increase to workers, and other unions tried to by-pass GMMWU. The Employers Society tried to work out a deal with the less controversial union, Grenada Trade Union Council (GTUC). This partnership would prove disastrous as the employers refused to increase the minimum wage for cocoa workers but promised that the workers would “receive bonuses based on a formula tied to the price of cocoa’. However, when the price of cocoa fell in the last quarter of 1950, the employers announced that they would reduce wages from 94 cents to 91cents for men and 78 to 76 cents for women. When GTUC pleaded with the Employers Society to let the wages remained as it is, the employers refused. This incident would lead hurt the credibility of GTUC but incidentally, would lead to the popularity of Gairy and the GMMWU; and come late January of 1951, Gairy would seized upon this opportunity.  

1951 Revolution

In January of 1951, Gairy visited several plantations where he started organising workers. At some point, while talking with workers at the La Sagesse Estates, Gairy was harassed by the owner and in retaliation, the workers went on strike. The next day, workers from a nearby plantation also went on strike. In a matter of weeks, surrounding plantations also had similar strikes. 

But these strikes were violent. The years of bottled societal tension spill open and the frustration of black and poor Grenadians were unleashed. 

On February 20, looting and arson took place throughout the island and many estates were set on fire. The violence skyrocket as Gairy echoed the word “Sky-red” when he wanted a specific estates to be set on fire. This was the first islandwide strike in the island’s history. Then on the 21st of February, Gairy organised a large rally outside of Grenada’s parliament. As parliament was in session, he demanded a meeting with the governor of the island. Gairy encourage the crowd by saying “We shall stand together; we shall die together” and “Don’t work!Don’t sleep!”. The black and poor population of Grenada that have been neglected for so long, love this and soon Gairy would be seen as a hero. 

Nevertheless, the governor refused to meet with Gairy and so, he ordered the state to arrest Gairy and his assistant, Herbert Gayle. Soon both men were arrested and sent off to neighbouring island of Carriacou, a dependency island of Grenada. Still, this arrested actually work in Gairy’s favour as he was now seen as a martyr by the working class. Even while arrested, Gairy had massive support outside of Grenada. There were massive crowds in Trinidad and Tobago demanding Gairy unrest as well as Alexander Bustamante, a politician in Jamaica who would become chief minister in 1953 and the island’s first prime minister in 1962, would echo the calls of Gairy’s release. With Grenadians’ authorities ignoring these demands, the island’s unrest continued. The event to become known as Grenada’s 1951 Revolution, would involve almost 5,000 agricultural workers and around 1,500 urban employees.The state tried unsuccessfully to curb the unrest but it only resulted in police killing 4 persons and injuring five others; yet they never flustered, the protestors surged on.

Realising his failure, the governor released Gairy who was brought back to the mainland to convince the strikers to resume working. So on March 15, Uncle Gairy, as he was now called by the working class,  issued a now famous speech. The speech went like this: 

Yes  folks,  this  your  leader,  “Uncle Gairy speaking to you. My dear, fellow Grenadians, you know that I am deeply concerned over the present states of affairs in this our dear little island. You too-everyone of you- are concerned one way or another. As head of Grenada’s two largest organisations- the Grenada People’s Party and the Grenada Manual and Mental Workers Union, I feel obligated morally and spiritually to do something to alleviate, to stop and when I say stop, I mean stop the burning of buildings and fields… Stop taking things away from the estates that are not belonging to you, particularly cocoa and nutmeg… And now we take another matter - the going back to work- when I lifted my finger on the 19th of February and said “strike”, several thousands went on strike, that is because you have confidence in me and you know every well that “Uncle Gairy” knows his whereabouts.” 

The historians, Catherine Sunshine and Phillip Wheaton, had this to say about Gairy’s speech, ”His famous March I5 speech reflected the style of his future leadership. In it, Gairy's opportunistic nature reveals it self his willingness to compromise with the colonial authorities while, at the same time, exploiting  the situation to build his personal power”

In a few months Gairy would capitalise off his increasing influence over the working class. With the Universal Adult Suffrage now in effect, when elections were held on the October 10, 1951, Gairy with his own political party, the Grenada People’s Party (GPP), won 71% of the 20,622 votes thus holding 6 out of the 7 parish seats. On the opposition side, only T.A. Marryshow held on to his seat. Still, Marryshow constituency was that of the urban St. Georges’s, Gairy and the GNP had the large following in the rural blacks folk of Grenada. 

So in less than a year, the now 29 years old Eric Matthew Gairy, the union leader who led a group of estate workers into Santa Maria tourist hotel and demanded they served a meal, the same Eric Matthew Gairy who told domestic servant girls to go on strike against severe working conditions that see them working from 6:00 am to 9:00 pm, this same Eric Matthew Gairy, would become Grenada’s most powerful political leader. 

As Gairy stepped into his role as a politician, he also cause fear into the upper classes. One accounts says that many of the elites in the country compared Gairy to Julien Fedon and the GMMWU to Kenya’s Mau Mau. The thing is, Gairy ascension would expose how deep Grenada’s race and class relations goes. Unlike the leaders at the time in the Caribbean, Gairy was never accepted by the status quo. Jamaica had the light skinned leaders in Alexander Bustamante and Norman Manley, while Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago had the esteemed educated Dr. Eric Williams and Grantley Adams, respectively. In Grenada, however, here was a black man from rural Grenada who was one of the most powerful locals on the island. To the elites, Gairy, a rural black poor, should know his place. As the historians, Catherine Sunshine and Phillip Wheaton notes “Gairy had upset the cultural status-quo by  bringing the black dispossessed from the countryside  right into the heart of St. George's as an empowered force. The urban middle class hoped to put the stigma  of blackness behind them by emulating the white  elite, yet here were these rural blacks calling into question the very advantages they had gained” 

As such over the next few years, the elites exerted their economic control of the island to undermined Gairy’s reputation. So when Gairy called another national strike on November 1953, it was rejected by the elites. This rejection and ultimately Gairy just been vague about what his exact demands were, would allow for the strike to be unsuccessful. To be note, this was the last time of the 1950s that the GMMWU called for a strike. 

The Birth of Gairyism

Yet the image of Gairy developed during 1951 Revolution as been a rebel that challenges the colonial status quo would stick with him for a very long time and ultimately laid the foundation of what would become known as Gairyism. Gairyism would come to be defined as the “pride and rebellion Gairy inspired; the self-seeking excesses of the man himself”. However, his political party really did not have any organisation or platform. Ironically of the 110 pieces of legislation that were passed between 1952 and 1954, only nine offered any benefits to the working class. Then Gairy’s would have speeches where he praise the colonial government. This position of Gairy would be noticed by his supporters and soon they would withdraw their support from him and the GMMWU. 

Gairy realised this new reality and seek out to a new image of his party. Thus, he renamed the GPP to GULP - Grenada’s United Labour Party. Still, during the 1954 elections, GULP only won 46% of the votes, 20% down from 1951 elections. Gairy once more did not take an initiative to enact laws to benefit the working class. Between 1955 and 1957, eighty three laws were passed and all but one was geared towards the advancement of the working class. Then came the 1957 election, where Gairy ultimately face the consequences of his disorganisation and taking the working class and black rural population for granted. The newly- created Grenada National Party (GNP), led by Gairy’s former second hand, Herbert Blaize, who you might remember was arrested with him during the 1951 revolution, took advantage of this. 

Still, the GNP had issues themselves. There were a lacked of social program to help the working class also. Between 1957 and 1958, some 81 laws were passed where all of them were in favour of the elites and their wealth. Thus between 1957 and 1960, the net income of planters went up by 170% while the plantation workers wages went up 15.3% in the midst of a 6% rise on the cost of living at a time where Grenada’s unemployment rate was 42.6%. Maybe, if the GNP had a better organisations and a policies geared towards the poor and working class, maybe Gairy’s legacy would fade away in the late 1950’s. However that was not the case. 

At this time, another attribute of Gairyism would take form. Gairy became interested in supernatural where he walked of magical powers and obeah. This combined with his allegiance to the Church would help in his populist style of politics with the rural population and in someway, he still had a psychological hold over that voting bloc. 

However, as history would have it, the next election held in 1961, Gairy could not stand run; for back in 1957, he led a steel band through an opponent’s political meeting and thus he lost his electoral rights. As such, came 1961, Joshua Thorne was now the leader of GULP and the party would go not to win 53% of the vote and 80% of the seats. Then in July of 1961, Joshua Thorne would resigned as head of GULP, making way for Gairy to take up his previous position of the political party. A month later, Gairy would become Chief Minister of State. This was momental for back in 1960, a new constitution was issued in Grenada, allowing for the Executive Council to have more power. As such, Gairy had the most political power he has ever had up to this point and this power came with more control over government’s appointments and public funds. It was Gairy not GULP who held power for GULP was in some sense, an extension of the man himself. 

One of the founding members of UWI Mona’s Department of Government, highly respected political scientist, Dr. Archibald W. Singham in his paper, ‘The Hero and the Crowd in Colonial Polity’, summaries these activities by stating that “Gary's political organisation has remained personal even during campaign periods, and he has always commanded more support than the candidates he nominated. There is no functioning central organisation. Gary instead maintains personal links with all the constituencies, but necessarily through the local candidate. A Party supporter knows that if he wants action or decision he must see Gary personally”

This power that Gairy commanded, would lead to another characteristic in the era of Gairyism - high levels government corruption. 

One of Gairy’s first act of his populist governance was to remove persons in the public sector who took opposition against these forthcoming corruption. Most memorable, he had a bitter spat with the Financial Security who apparently hid documents from him. Gairy would make him redundant and then appoint a Principal Secretary to oversee those duties. Gairy would also made the Chairman of the Tenders Board, an individual who reported directly to Gairy, uncharge of all awards.

So in March of 1962, the Crown’s representative to Grenada, James M. Lloyd, created an enquiry to investigate these allegation of corruption in the GULP government. The report that came out of this commission of enquiry was issued on May 8, 1962 and would uncovered numerous levels of corruption in Gairy’s government. These were published in what would become known as the “Squandermania Report” 

The highlights of the report was that Gairy gave deals and grant government contracts to his inner circle. So he declared that all cements should be bought from B.N. Davis and Company and at inflated rives while all government cars should be insured by unrecognised firm owned by the businessman, Cecil Maitland. Then there was the final attempt to buy land for the government from a William Douglas at a very inflated price of $500.00 per acre - 400% higher than the valuation made by the Superintendent of Forestry. All of this, took place within four months of Gairy becoming Chief Minister of Grenada. On another note, now a common a trait of GULP, between 1961 and June 1962, only one of the fifty eight legislations enacted benefited the working class. 

Still, the report was just what the old elites needed to further undermine Gairy and ironically, his pro-capitalist government. Therefore, the Crown suspended the new constitution and Squandermania Report would be a huge blow to Gairy; and ultimately ushered in GNP return to power come 1962. 

“Go Trinidad” Movement and the Little Eight

Now even though the “Squandermania Report” was a huge blow to Gairy and GULP, another issue also of interest to Grenadians during the 1960’s: the Go-Trinidad Movement. 

In 1958, there was the establishment of the West Indies Federation. This federation was a political union comprising of 10 territories of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, the then St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and Trinidad and Tobago. British Guyana and Belize held observer status with premier of Barbados, Sir Grantley Adams serving as the first and only Prime Minister of the Federation. This is so  because when internal island conflict led to then premier Norman Manley withdrawing Jamaica out of the federation, the union fell apart. For in the now famous words of Dr. Eric Williams, “one from ten leaves naught”. 

Now in the early 1960’s, there were talks in Grenada of another federation; this time between Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago. For years, Trinidad and Tobago have served as a means of employment for many Grenadians, where in return Grenadians have contributed to the social and economic development of the twin island state. Uriah Butler, who we spoke of in part 1 of this series; the calypsonian Mighty Sparrow and Dame Hilda Bynoe, the first woman to serve as a Governor of any British colonies, where she served as Governor of Grenada between 1967 - 1972, are a prime example of this. As such because of this history, this talk of a union states between the two countries were widely entertained by Grenadians and would birth the “Go-Trinidad” Movement between 1962-1967. There were also talks of another alternative among smaller British islands which many termed “The Little Eight”

Now Gairy was unsure of this union, however, GNP realising how important Trinidad and Tobago was to massive, quickly became pro-Trinidad. It is widely believed that Gairy hesitance of the “Go-Trinidad” Movement would put make him play a subservient role to Dr. Eric Williams; for even though Gairy at this point was the most powerful trade unionist in Grenada, he was no match for Dr. Williams who was undoubtably, at this time, one of the most esteemed politicians and intellects in the region. Still, despite Gairy hesitancy, a union was very popular among the public and Gairy needed the popularity. As such, he announced that after the elections he would consider the establishment of this union. However, Gairy’s deceit over the past few months caught up to him and not many persons believe him for he really had more to benefit financially by not entering a federation. 

One Caplyso singer document this in his 1962 song, The Eight Hater”: 

“Come early or come late. 

Uncle is for “Little Eight” 

But Uncle knows that Trinidad 

Is what make Grenada glad

“Little Eight” is Uncle pet 

Because that’s where he’s sure to get

Motor car and house and ting 

Plenty cash for him to fling” 

Now Gairy realising that his words carried no weight with the public, attempted his usual popularism to win over the voting public. So, one day, dressed in a white suit, top hat and a walking stick, he arrived in St. Georges on vessel, reciting the Lord’s Prayer. In a grand performance, he spoke of the many Judases who betrayed him. Yet still, this theatrics was in vain as Gairy lost the election to the GNP. 

Still, nothing came of the “Go Trinidad” Movement for no promises of any union between the two countries were made on Dr. Williams end. However, Gairy used this to his advantage and brought up claims of GNP decisiveness. He further stated that the GNP should resigned and elections should be held immediately. With harsh comments, he said that the only Grenadian union that would happen under Herbert Blaze leadership, was between Carriacou, Blazie’s home island. 

So while Gairy continued his attacks, the GNP governed. However, once again, not learning from their old mistakes, the policies they backed was towards the elites; the working class, especially rural blacks, was left behind. 

The 1967 Election & The Beginning of 12 Long Years 

So when the 1967 elections came around, the GNP, made no progress in improving the lives of the majority Grenadians. This, alongside Gairy’s reminder to Grenadians of GNP deceit of the “Go Trinidad” Movement, would dominate the campaign. So when the ballots were counted, GULP won 54% of the popular vote and  won 7 out of 10 seats. However, the 1967 election was important for previous constitutional changes made Grenada into an Associated State. Thus for the first time in the nation’s history, Grenada would be under full internal self government. As such, with GULP win, Gairy became Premier of Grenada, receiving the most power he has ever had in his political career. 

Unbeknownst to everyone, the next twelve years of Gairy’s time in office, would be one describe by many historians as an oppressive dictatorship. One scholar in particular, the esteemed professor of Caribbean Studies, Dr. Gordon K. Lewis, in his book ‘Grenada: The Jewel Deposited’, describe Gairy 12 years in power as “a bogus radicalism geared to the private interests of the dictator and his small clique of friends, completely uninterested in any fundamental reconstruction of the society or the economy”. 

So for twelve years, Grenadians and the rest of the world, would bear witness to the country’s economic deterioration and domestic repression. These were highlighted by the many cases of Gairy’s bribes and corruption, real estates scams, extortion deals, sex scandals, international partnership for his own self interest, and his now growing obsession with religion and flying saucers. But even most alarming, they would have to wake up everyday and come face to face with the reality that Gairy’s secret police, the Mongoose Gang, and his secret army, the Green Beast, will come down on anyone and anything that stood in his way of power.