Blackwell Reference Online

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Early in the morning of March 13, 1979, a small group of armed militants of the opposition New Jewel Movement (NJM) stormed and captured the army barracks at True Blue on the tiny southern Caribbean island of Grenada. Simultaneously, another detachment secured the sole radio station, renaming it “Radio Free Grenada” and calling on the citizenry to take to the streets and demand, by popular demonstration, the surrender of all police stations across the island. Six hours later, NJM and constitutional opposition leader Maurice Bishop declared the formation of the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG), arguing that the revolution was for “work, food, shelter, and a bright future for our children,” and all resistance ended. The NJM was in effective control of Grenada and her two smaller Grenadine islands of Carriacou and Petit Martinique.The Grenadian Revolution lasted for some four and a half years. It collapsed in October 1983 when deep, though previously hidden, divisions in the party leadership led, first, to the detention of Bishop, the popular prime minister, and then, in a series of fast-moving events, to his release by a crowd of supporters, their seizure of a military base, and, tragically, the recapturing of the base and murder of Bishop and some of his closest allies by soldiers of the People's Revolutionary Army (PRA), of which he had been, until these events, commander ... log in or subscribe to read full text