Bishop, Maurice (1944–1983)

Grenadian socialist politician, president 1979–83. Founder of the New Jewel Movement (NJM) in 1973, a mass anti-colonial Marxist–Leninist organization, he became prime minister of a provisional revolutionary government in 1979, after Eric Gairy was ousted in a coup. Radical elements within the NJM embarked on a socialist economic programme, aligning the country with communist Cuba and the USSR, and in October 1983 Bishop, who had tried to improve relations with a concerned USA, was deposed. He was killed by the military under General Hudson Austin, who had seized power as a Revolutionary Military Council. These events precipitated armed intervention on 25 October 1983 by a US–Caribbean ‘liberation force’.

Heavily influenced by US-inspired Black Power ideology in the late 1960s, Bishop suffered permanent physical injury from repression by government henchmen for his political activity, and his father was killed by police in 1974.

Bishop was born in Aruba, in the Netherlands Antilles, into a middle-class family. He first became acquainted with Black Power while studying law in London and, on his return to the West Indies, witnessed the April 1970 Black Power disturbances in Trinidad. Following his election to the Legislative Council in 1976, Bishop became leader of the opposition to Gairy's government. The largely bloodless coup that placed him in power in March 1976 took place while Gairy was attending a UN meeting in New York, and was triggered by his alleged plans to ‘liquidate’ the NJM. When Bishop was deposed in a power struggle within the NJM on 13 October 1983 he was initially placed under house arrest; he was released by his supporters after six days, but swiftly shot.