Blackwell Reference Online

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The New Jewel movement (New Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation), or NJM, was a liberation movement that staged a revolution in the 1970s in Grenada , a small island-nation located in the far south of the Windward Island chain of the Caribbean Sea. The vast majority of Grenada's population in the 1970s, especially former slaves of African heritage, endured widespread poverty and scarcity of basic living necessities. In the 1970s the NJM transformed into a political party with a platform of nationalization of the island's major infrastructure, redistributing land to peasants, and to recover a greater share of revenues derived from the tourism industry, which was providing a growing share of the national gross domestic product. As a founder of the New Jewel movement, Maurice Bishop was a charismatic leader and dynamic orator who rallied the masses to support land reform and generating economic resources in the island-nation, which was dependent on the export of cloves as a cash crop. In 1974, following 300 years of colonization, Grenada gained independence from Britain at the same time as the NJM was gaining wider support among the working class and peasants through Bishop's comprehensive plan to transform the country. However, Sir Eric Matthew Gairy, Grenada's first prime minister, engaged in political repression and violence against his radical opponents to ... log in or subscribe to read full text