A Strange Record

I just finished reading Setting the Record Straight by Richard Hart.

A book about the Grenadian Revolution, I found a scan of it online, it was a very surprising read. Hart was the Attorney General for the New Jewel Movement and his booklet is openly pro the revolution.

Curiously though Hart seems to be a fairly mild labour party social democrat at heart, so many of the things he praises Bishop and the NJM for run counter to the narrative of them being another Cuban style regime.

He talks about the NJMs desires to restore parliamentary government, their commitment to a mixed economy, etc. He even talks about how there was two powerful businessmen in the cabinet, how their investment law was being updated to attract foreign investment and how they would give interest free loans to large rural estates to stop them going under and details the time the NJM broke up a successful workers co-op at the Coca cola plant and gave it back to the franchise holder as good things proving their revolutionary commitments.

I was genuinely surprised, I'm used to most pro Bishop narratives being written by Castro worshippers who know very little about Grenada. This on the other hand is full of information from anecdotes to statistics and champions them as moderate social reformers who openly defended investment and moderate dealings.

Their were a few bits that I found odd, the first section is a detailed explanation about the NJMs plans to revive "normal" government via elections and parliament. But the second section is about the NJMs mass meetings they were famous for, and their Hart makes the case that they were open and lively, got thousands of people to participate and were successful in amending laws and getting investment.

But after reading those sections I had a strong question, if that's true and this system was so astounding, why were the NJM pushing for bringing back representative government? They appear to already have a superior democratic system so why the regression?

And some very interesting parts are glossed over. According to Harts account of the in fighting that destroyed Bishop, the reason it got so serious wasn't that Bishop and the rest of the NJM leadership had a rift, its that they had this rift while Bishop was visiting Eastern Europe and Cuba, so apparently they were afraid Bishop would come back with a load of Cuban commandos and kill them. Obviously that didn't happen but the fear that it would escalated the situation from a struggle between Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Movement party over who had ultimate authority into a potentially bloody fratricide. Which it quickly became once Bishop's moves against the rest of the leadership were uncovered and he tried to seize Fort Rupert.

Which to me is really interesting, why did they think that was a possibility? In public the NJM and Cuba had a great relationship so what does this tell us about the reality? but Hart just moves on. Still on other subjects the details are quite exhaustive, anything with a legal angle will have pages of information and explanation, including trade in nutmegs, and the legal grounds for the trials of the NJM leadership for their murder of Maurice Bishop by the US installed government. 

I think its worth reading, and according to Hart's introduction this was supposed to be the beginning of a much more expansive work, hopefully that will appear and answer some of these questions on lightly touched on.