1983 Coup D'état - Grenada
By Everton Obi Powell
Maurice Rupert Bishop (29 May 1944 – 19 October 1983) was a Grenadian revolutionary and the leader of the New JEWEL Movement (NJM) – a party that sought to prioritorize socio-economic development, education and black liberation. The NJM came to power during the 13 March 1979 revolution 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.
In September 1983, simmering tensions within PRG leadership reached a boiling point. A faction within the party, led by Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard, tried to make Bishop either step down or agree to a power-sharing arrangement. Bishop rejected the proposal.
In response, the Coard faction in conjunction with the PRA placed Bishop under house arrest on 13 October. Large public demonstrations gathered to demand Bishop's release and his return to power. The protesters numbered as high as 30,000 on an island of 100,000, and even some of Bishop's guards joined the protests. Despite the sizable support, Bishop knew the determination of the Coard faction. He confided to a journalist: "I am a dead man."
On 19 October, a crowd of protesters managed to free Bishop from house arrest. He made his way, first by truck, then by car, to army headquarters at Fort Rupert (known today as Fort George), which he and his supporters were able to seize control of.
At that point, Coard dispatched a military force led by Hudson Austin from Fort Frederick to retake Fort Rupert. Bishop and seven others, including his cabinet ministers and aides, were captured.
A four-man PRA firing squad executed Bishop and the others by machine-gunning them in the Fort Rupert court yard. After Bishop was dead, a gunman slit his throat and cut off his finger to steal his ring. The bodies were transported to a military camp on the peninsula of Calivigny and partially burned in a pit. The location of their remains is still unknown.
Partly as a result of Bishop's murder, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and the nations of Barbados and Jamaica appealed to the United States for assistance, as did Sir Paul Scoon, Governor-General of Grenada. Within days, President Ronald Reagan launched a U.S.-led invasion to overthrow the PRG.
US invaded within 6 days with 8000 soldiers. Bernard Cord and Hudson Austin were captured and sentence to death but sentences were commuted to Life.
Austin was release in 2008 and died from cancer in 2022. The final U.S. report claims 19 killed and 116 wounded; the Cubans to have had 25 killed, 59 wounded and 638 "combatants" captured; the Grenadians to have suffered 45 killed and 358 wounded.
Violence and death surrounded Bishop family. In 1974 his father Rupert was shot in the back and killed at by Eric Gairy Mongoose Gang during a protest. Maurice himself was shot and killed during the 1983 execution. His son's mother and girlfriend was killed during the 1983 execution and his only son Vladimir was stabbed to death in a Toronto nightclub at only 16.
