Witness seminar: Britain and the Grenada Crisis, 1983

Witness Seminars:

Britain and the Grenada Crisis, 1983

gov.uk/fco

Witness Seminar Britain and the Grenada Crisis, 1983

Edited by M.D. Kandiah, Department of Political Economy King’s College London & Sue Onslow, Institute for Commonwealth Studies With Assistance from Matthew Glencross, formerly King’s College London

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Introduction This second volume contains the transcript of a witness seminar that was held in May 2009 to examine the British response to the 1983 American invasion of Grenada, a Caribbean Commonwealth realm that had gained independence in the previous decade. This witness seminar provides a case study of the actions of diplomats and policymakers at a time of crisis through the observations and recollections of British diplomatic representatives in the region (Barbados; Trinidad and Tobago; and Grenada) and in the USA, from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, from the Prime Minister’s office, and from the British military establishment. Another contributor, was Ambassador Lawrence G. Rossin from the State Department, who shared his point of view as a knowledgeable and interested American official. All participants revealed that their decisions were shaped by the reality of the UK’s changing but still longstanding connections to the Caribbean, while at the same time considering the actions of the USA, which the British accepted was the dominant power in the region. Additionally, this witness seminar indicates the way in which the actions and reactions of the diplomats based in the Caribbean were shaped by the particularities of their personal and local positions, which were at times at variance with the official stance in London.

Both witness seminars reveal the extent to which British diplomats serving in the region have an enormous affection for the Caribbean and for the people who live there, and they feel a connection which is the result of a history that goes back to the Britain’s first interactions with the new world. According to their testimonies, the sense of connection is shaped commonalities such as shared love of sports (particularly cricket), and by recognisable cultures, and sense of shared norms and institutions.

To get these kinds of varied, personal, and hands-on insights, it is important to gather the memories of those FCO alumni who have worked at various Caribbean High Commissions, which is what these two witness seminars have sought to do.

Dr M.D. Kandiah Director, Witness Seminar Programme Department of Political Economy King’s College London

2

King’s College London

Caribbean Witness Seminars

Format A witness seminar is like a group interview or conversation, led and moderated by the chair.

•

There is an audience consisting of FCO alumni and current staff, academics and students of foreign policy. There are contributions and questions from the floor.

•

The witness seminar is a public event, and it is recorded, transcribed and archived.

•

All participants who speak are told that they will be identified in the recording, published transcripts, and in the archival holdings.

•

All participants are informed that an agreed transcript of the proceedings, with speakers and their contributions identified, will be published or will be made available to researchers. This agreed transcript will be corrected for grammar, language, and to improve sense.

3

King’s College London

Caribbean Witness Seminars

Witness Seminar Britain and the Grenada Crisis, 1983 Friday, 29 May 2009 A316 Main Building, LSE Houghton Street London, WC2A 2AE Programme: 14:00–15:30: Session One 15.30p.m.–15.45: Break for refreshment 15.45–17.00: Session Two

Participants Chair: Professor Paul Sutton, London Metropolitan University, Senior Professor in Caribbean Studies. Formerly Emeritus Reader in Politics, University of Hull.

Panel: Field Marshal the Lord Bramall (1923–2019), KG, GCB, KCB, OBE, MC, JP, Chief of the General Staff, 1979–82; Field Marshal, 1982. ADC (Gen.), 1979–82. Colonel Commandant, 3rd Battalion Royal Green Jackets, 1973–84.

Robert Chase, Head, Caribbean Section, Mexico and Caribbean Department, FCO, 1976–80, Assistant Head, South American Department, FCO, 1982–83.

John Edwards, CMG, Head, West Indian and Atlantic Department, FCO, 1981–84.

Peter Gay, Second Secretary, UK High Commission Trinidad and Tobago, 1978–80.

Sir Sydney Giffard, KCMG, Deputy Under-Secretary of State, FCO, 1982–84.

John Kelly, CMG, LVO, MBE, UK Permanent Representative, FCO, Grenada, 1982–86.

Sir Bernard Ingham, Prime Minister’s Press Secretary, 1979–90.

David Montgomery, CMG, OBE, Deputy High Commissioner, UK High Commission Barbados, FCO, 1980–84.

Mrs Patsy Robertson, Commonwealth Secretariat.

Ambassador Lawrence G. Rossin (1952–2012), US State Department. Later US Ambassador to Croatia, 2001–03.

Audience: Professor Michael Cox, LSE IDEAS. David Lane, CMG, High Commissioner in Trinidad and Tobago, 1980–85.

Mark Pellew, CVO, Counsellor: Washington, 1983–89.

Tony Thorndike, author of Grenada: Politics, Economics and Society (1985) and other works related to Grenada.

Bowen Wells, Conservative MP for Hertford and Stevenage and then Hertford and Stortford, 1970–2001; Chair, International Development Select Committee, 1997–2001.

4

King’s College London

Caribbean Witness Seminars

Brief Chronology of Events1 1967

1967

1972 1973

1974

1975 1976 1978 1979

In March, Grenada achieved internal self-government under the Associated Statehood Act. Britain retained responsibility for defence and foreign affairs.

On 25 August, Eric Gairy elected for fourth period in office. Gairy was first elected in 1951 and re-elected in 1954 and 1957. He had been dismissed from office by the Colonial Office for financial irregularities in 1962.

Eric Gairy re-elected on 28 February.

11 March: the New Jewel Movement (NJM) established with the merger of Maurice Bishop’s Movement for the Assemblies of People and Unison Whiteman’s Joint Endeavour for Welfare, Education and Liberty.

18 November: Six leading members of the NJM arrested and beaten up by Gairy’s police and Mongoose Gang in what becomes known as ‘Bloody Sunday’, the day a General Strike had been due to begin.

1 January: a three-week national strike started. During protest march Bishop’s father shot dead by police.

7 February: Grenada achieved independence.

8-10 April: The NJM concluded that the cause of the failure to remove Gairy during the 1973–74 unrest was backward economic structure, a strong petit bourgeoisie and ideologically weak working class. They decided to become a vanguard Marxist-Leninist organisation.

December: The NJM established a Grenada-Cuba Friendship society.

December: Gairy narrowly won a sixth term with 52 per cent of the vote.

Bishop appointed leader of the opposition People’s Alliance in parliament.

September: Guns smuggled from the USA to Grenada in three barrels marked ‘grease’ and delivered to the home of a senior NJM member.

12 March: US Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents arrived in Grenada as part of an ongoing investigation into gunrunning from the USA to Grenada.

Gairy departed Grenada to visit New York.

12 March: The NJM seized power in a coup which met with little or no resistance from Gairy’s army or police force.

14-15 March: CARICOM (Caribbean Community) met to discuss the implications of the coup and how to restore constitutional order. No consensus reached.

20 March: WIAS (West Indies Associated States) met to discuss the coup; WIAS strongly condemned the coup and refused to accept the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) until a return to constitutional normalcy occurred.

Barbados, Jamaica and Guyana officially recognised the Bishop regime.

22 March: Britain, Canada and the USA officially recognised the Bishop regime.

23 March: US Ambassador to Barbados, Frank Ortiz, met Prime Minister Bishop and discussed aid and elections. Bishop also met with British High Commissioner to Trinidad, Harry Stanley, and discussed the same issues.

1

Prepared by Gary Williams, University of Essex, and M.D. Kandiah. This is not meant to be a comprehensive survey of the events that led to the US invasion of Grenada. The purpose is to give a brief framework of significant events.

5

Caribbean Witness Seminars

1980

King’s College London

25 March: Bishop suspended the country’s constitution and replaced it with a series of People’s Laws.

27 March: High Commissioner Stanley returned to Grenada and met Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard to discuss the economy and elections.

4 April: The first load of Cuban arms arrived secretly by plane. Further arms and personnel arrived on 7 and 14 April. Arms from Guyana arrived on March 16, 22 and April 9.

6 April: Bishop claimed that Gairy recruited mercenaries to organise a countercoup.

7 April: Bishop requested arms from Britain, USA and CARICOM. 8 April: Bishop announced that he will be asking Cuba and Venezuela as well and expected material assistance soon after.

10 April: Ambassador Ortiz met Bishop and informed him that the USA ‘would view with displeasure any tendency on the part of Grenada to develop closer ties with Cuba.’

13 April: Bishop rebuked the USA on Radio Free Grenada, claiming that Ortiz made ‘veiled threats’ against the tourist industry and was unresponsive about aid. He said that if Cuba offered aid Grenada would accept it and warned that ‘we are not in anybody’s backyard, and we are definitely not for sale.’

14 April: Grenada established diplomatic relations with Cuba.

2–3 May: A tripartite meeting in Washington between the USA, UK and Canada discussed Grenada, the Eastern Caribbean and the Caribbean region.

16 July: Grenada signed the Declaration of St George’s with Dominica and St Lucia where left-wing governments had just been elected.

September: Grenada established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.

13 October: The independent Torchlight newspaper was closed by the PRG. People’s Law 81 was passed to limit ownership in any medium to four per cent and to ban foreign ownership.

November: Bishop announced that Cuba will provide financial aid and labour to build an international airport at Point Salines.

January: Grenada supported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the UN General Assembly vote.

20 February: UK Minister for Overseas Development, Neil Marten, announced that ‘greater weight should be given in the allocation of British aid to political, industrial and commercial considerations alongside our basic developmental objectives.’

May: The UK established a one-man post on Grenada, responsible to the British High Commission in Barbados.

May: US Operation Solid Shield military manoeuvres were conducted in the Caribbean.

19 June: A bomb exploded at a rally in Grenada narrowly missing the PRG Cabinet.

October: The PRG signed a secret military agreement with the Soviet Union to provide substantial levels of arms and ammunition. Further agreements were signed in February 1981 and July 1982. Military agreements were also signed with Cuba and North Korea.

6

Caribbean Witness Seminars

1981

1982

1983

King’s College London

February: London decided that due to the ‘unsatisfactory political situation’ a new loan would not be made to Grenada under the banana development programme. No new aid agreements would be made.

March: The USA blocked a US$19 million loan request to the IMF by Grenada. The USA failed to block three other IMF loans totalling US$20 million during the PRG’s lifetime.

18 June: The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) was established. Its members are Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Kitts-Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent.

19 June: The independent Grenadian Voice newspaper was closed after first issue, despite conforming to People’s Law 81.

June: The Caribbean Development Bank rejected a $4 million US loan because it excluded Grenada on political grounds.

6 July: The UK Treasury’s Export Credit Guarantee Department agreed to underwrite a £6 million Plessey Electronics contract to supply equipment to Grenada’s airport project.

1 August: US Operation Ocean Venture naval manoeuvres commenced and lasted until October.

24 February: President Reagan announced the US$350 million Caribbean Basin Initiative designed to address the socio-economic causes of unrest in the region.

9 April: President Reagan visited Barbados and told regional leaders that Grenada ‘now bears the Soviet and Cuban trademark, which means that it will attempt to spread the virus among its neighbours’.

28 April: Operation Ocean Venture 82, US naval manoeuvres, took place in the Caribbean for one month.

21 September: The Soviet Union opened an embassy in Grenada.

29 October: A Regional Security System was established by Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, St Lucia and St Vincent. Grenada was excluded.

October: PRG Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard resigned from the Central Committee and Political Bureau, disappointed over the rate of social and economic transformation, and by the difficulties encountered in establishing a Marxist-Leninist party structure and control system.

16–19 November: A CARICOM Heads of Government meeting produced a Declaration recognising that ideological pluralism will not be an obstacle to regional integration.

December: UK Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee Report on Central America and the Caribbean noted the ‘considerable degree of success achieved by the economic and social policies of the PRG’. The Committee recommended that the UK promote a dialogue with the PRG and establish a new bilateral aid programme.

12 January: FCO Assistant Under-Secretary Sir John Ure met Bishop during a visit to the Caribbean. Discussion focused on restoring the country’s constitution, elections and aid.

23 March: President Reagan announced Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI or ‘Star Wars’) and with the aid of satellite photos drew attention to Grenada, stating that ‘the Soviet-Cuban militarisation of Grenada, in short, can only be seen as power projection into the region’.

March: US Operation Universal Trek naval manoeuvres took place.

7

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

7 June: Bishop met National Security Advisor William Clark and Deputy Secretary of State Kenneth Dam during an 11-day visit to Washington and New York.

13–19 July: PRG Central Committee First Plenary session was held.

Organisational weaknesses were identified and the continued failure of the party to transform itself ideologically and organisationally and to exercise firm leadership along a Leninist path.

26 August: An emergency meeting of the Central Committee focused on the membership and function of the CC and beginning of the disintegration of the party.

14–16 September: An emergency meeting of the Central Committee focused on the membership and function of the CC. Bishop was targeted for direct criticism; the quality of his leadership was questioned and his failure to put the party of a firm Marxist-Leninist footing emphasised. A Joint Leadership solution was proposed: Bishop would be responsible for work with the masses, propaganda, organs of popular democracy, foreign affairs.

Coard would be responsible for party organisation and development, strategy and tactics.

25 September: At an NJM Extraordinary General Meeting Bishop expressed his doubts about the Joint Leadership proposal but accepted it.

27 September: Bishop and two colleagues departed for an economic mission to Eastern Europe. During the trip Bishop changed his mind about Joint Leadership and saw it as an effort to undermine him.

12 October: The Political Bureau and Central Committee met. Bishop’s request to reopen the issue of Joint Leadership was rejected and Bishop identified as ‘mainly responsible for the crisis in the party.’

Bishop’s bodyguards circulated rumours that the Coards were plotting to kill Bishop.

13 October: A meeting of NJM members called: Bishop denounced as having ‘disgraced the party’ and being ‘without redemption’. He was placed under house arrest and expelled from the party the next day.

John Kelly (the British representative on Grenada) reported to the British High Commission in Barbados that ‘Coard is about to throw Bishop out and declare a Marxist state’.

In Washington the State Department’s Restricted Inter-Agency Group (RIG) met to discuss the possibility of further unrest in Grenada and the threat this posed to US citizens.

14 October: UK Deputy High Commissioner to Barbados, David Montgomery, reported to London that Coard had been all but successful in removing Bishop.

PRG Minister Selwyn Strachan tried to announce Bishop’s replacement by Coard at the Free West Indian newspaper’s premises but was shouted down and chased off by an angry crowd.

Fidel Castro sent a letter to the Central Committee saying that events were ‘a surprise, and disagreeable’ and that Cuba would not get involved in Grenada’s internal affairs.

Negotiations between Coard and pro-Bishop Ministers to find a solution to the crisis continued for three days but without success.

8

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

17 October: RIG met and considered the possibility of a non-permissive evacuation operation.

Barbadian Prime Minister Tom Adams met with US Ambassador Milan Bish to request US involvement. Dominican Prime Minister Eugenia Charles met with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Charles Gillespie to request US involvement.

18 October: Several hundred people took to the streets in Grenada to protest, chanting ‘No Bishop, no revo’.

19 October: Prime Minister Adams met Ambassador Bish again and made a strong pitch for US assistance to rescue Bishop but also raised the idea of a US and Eastern Caribbean multinational force to take over Grenada and restore order.

Prime Minister Adams met the British High Commissioner, Giles Bullard, to discuss the idea of a multinational military intervention.

Bishop freed from house arrest by a crowd of his supporters. Bishop headed to Fort Rupert. The Central Committee ordered the army to retake the Fort—in the process 30–40 people were killed. Bishop and seven colleagues were lined up and shot.

A 16-man Revolutionary Military Council was established, headed by General Hudson Austin. A four-day shoot-on-sight curfew was imposed.

20 October: The Crisis Pre-Planning Group met in Washington to discuss an evacuation operation.

St Lucian Prime Minister John Compton called Prime Minister Adams to express in ‘the strongest possible terms’ the need for a Caribbean initiative to intervene in Grenada on a multinational basis.

Prime Minister Adams met Ambassador Bish and suggested intervention under the auspices of the OECS. Bish informed Adams that ‘unequivocal written requests’ would be required.

Cuba’s Fidel Castro condemned the RMC, saying that political relations would ‘undergo profound and serious analysis’.

The Special Situations Group (chaired by Vice President George Bush) met in Washington. Planning focused on a larger-scale operation rather than an evacuation. The Sixth Fleet Carrier Battle Group on its way to the Mediterranean was diverted towards Grenada to provide a military option.

21 October: The OECS met in Barbados and agreed to a military solution.

Britain, the US, France, Canada and Venezuela would be approached for assistance. Prime Ministers Adams, Charles and Seaga met with US diplomats afterwards to convey the request to ‘depose the outlaw regime in Grenada by any means’.

British embassy officials in Washington reported that contact with the State Department suggested that no action was currently planned.

22 October: President Reagan responded positively to the OECS’s request and approved planning for a military operation. There would be three objectives: 1) ensure the safety of US nationals, 2) restore democratic government and 3) the elimination of current, and prevention of further, Cuban intervention on Grenada.

Head of Chancery at the British Embassy in Washington, Robin Renwick, visited the State Department to express British concern about a possible military intervention.

9

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

High Commissioner Giles Bullard received an oral request for assistance from Prime Minister Adams, who indicated that a formal written request would follow.

The HMS Antrim was diverted towards Grenada in case an evacuation of UK nationals was required.

US diplomats, Linda Flohr and Ken Kurze, and British Deputy High Commissioner David Montgomery flew to Grenada from Barbados.

CARICOM met in Trinidad and focused on a non-military solution, ruling out the use of force or external involvement in a Caribbean problem. The OECS members decided to proceed irrespective of CARICOM. Grenada expelled from CARICOM. 23 October: 241 marines are killed in a suicide attack in Beirut.

The National Security Planning Group met in the morning and afternoon in Washington. President Reagan signed the National Security Decision Directive that authorised the operation.

David Montgomery and John Kelly met with Governor General Paul Scoon in Grenada.

British and American diplomats met with RMC member Leon Cornwall.

Discussions about the evacuation of nationals were unproductive and Cornwall insisted that order would be restored shortly, and that a new government would be formed.

Montgomery reported that the situation was ‘calm, tense, and pretty volatile’.

High Commissioner Bullard reported to London that CARICOM offered the best chance of a peaceful solution but that the OECS would go along with a military solution if external assistance was forthcoming.

Minister at the British Embassy in Washington, Derek Thomas, contacted the State Department to enquire about US intentions and got the same message as Renwick had received the day before.

Ambassador Frank McNeil met with Caribbean leaders in Barbados to provide an independent assessment of the situation. McNeil explained that, if the US were to be involved, a formal written invitation would be required from the OECS. Radio Free Grenada announced that the OECS had taken a decision to send military forces to Grenada. The militia and army were mobilised.

Cornwall met US diplomats in the evening to plead for talks to avoid bloodshed. RMC inflexibility over evacuation plans and their determination to stay in power made progress impossible.

24 October: US Ambassador McNeil reported to Washington that the RMC believed an intervention was imminent and that they were not keen to let the students leave and that the situation on the island was deteriorating rapidly.

The curfew was lifted in Grenada. Four charter flights departed from Pearls airport. Colonel Pedro Tortola Comas arrived in Grenada from Cuba to take charge of the Cuban contingent.

The US Embassy in Barbados received information that 50 per cent of the students at St George’s University wanted to leave.

10

Caribbean Witness Seminars

1984

King’s College London

The UK Cabinet met and considered reports on the OECS and CARICOM meetings, Montgomery’s meeting with Governor General Scoon and the reports from the British embassy in Washington.

British Ambassador to Washington, Sir Oliver Wright, met with US UnderSecretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger who confirmed that military action was likely.

UK Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe informed the House of Commons that London was in close touch with both the US and Caribbean governments; when asked about the possibility of US intervention, he replied that ‘I know of no such intention’.

President Reagan gave the ‘go ahead’ order for Operation Urgent Fury to begin the next morning.

OECS leaders were informed that the US had acceded to their request.

President Reagan informed the leadership of Congress of his decision to intervene in Grenada.

President Reagan sent a letter to Downing Street stating that he was giving ‘serious consideration’ to the OECS’ request and would welcome the Prime Minister’s thoughts and advice. A second letter arrived some hours later indicating that President Reagan had decided to ‘respond positively’ to the OECS request.

Prime Minister Thatcher phoned President Reagan and asked him to call off the operation fearing that it would endanger US and British citizens and the Governor General, and that Britain had not received any written request from the OECS. Furthermore, most CARICOM members opposed a military solution. President Reagan thanked her but had already decided to proceed with the operation.

25 October: Operation Urgent Fury commenced at 5:00 a.m. local time.

Within three days 6,000 US troops were on Grenada.

Prime Minister Thatcher informed the House of Commons that the government had ‘communicated our very considerable doubts’ to the USA. 26 October: Governor General Scoon rescued and flown to the USS Guam and then on to Point Salines airport where he signed a formal written invitation.

28 October: US forces secured ‘all significant military objectives’. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Vessey admitted that ‘we got a lot more resistance than we expected.’

3 November: Hostilities officially ended.

9 November: Governor General Scoon named a nine-member interim government to be headed by Nicholas Braithwaite.

3 December: Coalition New National Party won 14 of the 15 seats in the first election since 1976.

11

King’s College London

Caribbean Witness Seminars

Questions for Discussion These were circulated to participants before the event.

1.

What were relations with Eric Gairy’s Grenada like after independence in 1974? What was known about the opposition New Jewel Movement?

2.

How and why did British and American responses to the NJM’s coup on 13 March 1979 differ?

3.

What were relations with the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) like under the Thatcher government? What were the main areas of contact? To what extent was British policy influence by US concerns? Did the UK share these concerns?

4.

Was the UK aware of any crisis within the PRG in the lead up to Prime Minister Maurice Bishop’s arrest in October 1983? What was the reaction to his arrest in London? What contact was there between British, American and Caribbean officials in the region?

5.

How and when did news of Bishop’s death emerge? What was the response in London?

6.

What and when did the UK know about the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States’ (OECS) intention to request assistance for a military solution?

7.

How did London react to the OECS request and how important was it?

8.

Did London place greater emphasis on the outcome of the CARICOM meeting on 22 October? Did the UK underestimate the strength of OECS feelings?

9.

What role did the British High Commission in Barbados play? What was the nature of the reports that London was receiving from the High Commission?

10.

What information was London receiving from the British Embassy in Washington?

11.

When and how was Governor General Sir Paul Scoon’s invitation to Barbadian Prime Minister Tom Adams to restore order in Grenada made?

12.

When FCO officials met on 24 October to consider reports from the Caribbean and the US what conclusions were drawn about the likelihood of a non-military or military solution to the crisis? Was there a consensus?

13.

When President Reagan informed Prime Minister Thatcher the night before the intervention that he was considering responding positively to the OECS request how did she respond? To what extent was her response shaped by her personal relationship with Reagan? Was there the expectation that London’s views would have any impact?

14.

Why and how was the UK excluded from the Grenada intervention? Would the British reaction have been different if they had been informed earlier and received a written invitation from the OECS? Did the UK need to be involved?

12

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

15.

How did Grenada impact upon Anglo-American relations?

16.

How did Grenada impact upon Anglo-Caribbean relations?

17.

How did the FCO react to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report on Grenada that was published in March 1984?

13

King’s College London

Caribbean Witness Seminars

Britain and The Grenada Crisis, 1983

Professor Mick Cox: I am one of the directors of LSE IDEAS. We have tried through IDEAS to do what universities often do not do, which is to clamber out of their ivory tower, think about the real world and bring together policymakers and those in the academic world. That is part of what we have been trying to do through these various witness seminars, which have been so successful over the past year. I must remind people that Maurice Bishop2 was at the LSE. I am not sure why I am reminding people of that fact, but he was here.

I welcome all the distinguished guests and I shall hand over to Paul Sutton, who will be hosting the discussion.

Professor Paul Sutton: I welcome everyone … The seminar will be recorded and transcribed, which means that the speakers will be on record. As such, we want everyone when participating for the first time from the floor to identify themselves and, in particular, sign a consent form so that, when the record is lodged, we can use their contribution. Without that, their contribution will be wiped.

Please make sure that the form is signed.

We also believe in monopolies, so we are asking no one else to record the session.

Before the seminar is published, a draft manuscript will be sent to each contributor—both those around the table and to the speakers from the floor. Everyone will then have the opportunity to make amendments, corrections or deletions to the manuscript. The full edited manuscript will then be published. Because of that and because we want to establish the truth and make it available to everyone, there is no Chatham House Rule. Speakers will be attributed. What they say will go down on record. There is a refreshment break for 15 minutes at 3.30 pm. We shall start again at 3.45 pm and finish at 5 o’clock. Will everyone turn off their mobile phones, an important consideration in such events?

In bringing people together for the event, we are trying to arrive collectively at a situation in which everyone has a better understanding of what went on. Often, as I have done over my years as an academic, the one-to-one interviews attract part of the story, but when you have lots of one-to-one interviews, you do not quite get all of it. Hopefully, given all the distinguished people here today, we can bring those in. The witness seminars have done a lot of things. They have covered similar areas in the past, such as American perceptions of the Falklands War, given that that was another situation when there was a slight entanglement— although not dramatic—between Britain and the United States; decolonisation in Africa; Rhodesian UDI—again, a vexed question; the role of Her Majesty’s embassy in Washington and the like. A lot of material has been covered. In fact, more than 100 witness seminars have so far been collected. We are now moving into the second 100 of them.

I am currently Research Professor at London Metropolitan University. Before that, I was at Hull University for many years. I published a book on Grenada at the time with Tony Payne and Tony Thorndike who is sitting in the front row. I knew some of the protagonists, Maurice Bishop and Bernard Coard,3 and indeed made several visits to Grenada in the years

2

Maurice Bishop (1944–83), a leader of the New Jewel Movement and Second Prime Minister of Grenada, 1979-83.

3 Bernard Coard, Grenadian Deputy Prime Minister and (for 5 days) Prime Minister, Oct. 1983.

14

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

of the revolution. I have always followed events since then. Will those round the table introduce themselves briefly before we start the main proceedings?

Dr Gary Williams: I am based at the University of Essex in the Research and Enterprise Office. I was one of Paul’s former PhD students. I have published several articles on Grenada and, most recently, a book.

Sir Bernard Ingham: I am the former press secretary to Margaret Thatcher4 for all bar the first four months of her Prime Ministership.

Sir Sydney Giffard: I was at the Foreign Office at the time of Grenada and the Falklands.

Field Marshal The Lord Bramall: I was Chief of the Defence Staff between 1982 and 1985.

John Edwards: I was head of the West Indian and Atlantic Department at the FCO between 1981 and 1984.

Immediately before that, I was Head of the British Development Division in the Caribbean based in Barbados. My career was spent between the Overseas Development Administration and the FCO. Mrs Patsy Robertson: I am from the Caribbean. I worked for several years at the Commonwealth Secretariat as Director of Information and spokesperson during the time of Sir Shridath Ramphal.

John Kelly: I was the British Resident Representative in Grenada from 1982 to 1986, so I was there during the period when the revolution collapsed.

Peter Gay: I was in Grenada from late 1978 to early 1980 during the period when the first revolution took place.

Ambassador Lawrence G. Rossin: I am a retired State Department Officer. At the time, I was in the US Embassy in Barbados, which covered Grenada for all of 1981 and part of 1982. I returned to Grenada at the time of the US military intervention in October 1983 and was there for about the first four months.

Robert Chase: I was Head of the Caribbean section during 1979 and 1980, during the coup and was subsequently Acting Head of the South American Department between 1981 and 1984.

4

Margaret Thatcher (Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, 1925–2013), Prime Minister, 1979–90.

15

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Sutton: Thank you for introducing yourselves. Gary and I have worked out a series of questions. We would like to cover as many of them as we can because we think that that can provide the indepth story. However, we may be side-tracked at certain times, but I shall try to keep things in a clear order.

I should particularly like Robert Chase to give attention to the first question. What were relations with Eric Gairy’s5 Grenada like after independence in 1974 and what was known in the Foreign Office about the opposition New Jewel Movement—the New Joint Endeavour for Welfare, Education and Liberation Movement—at the time?

Chase: Eric Gairy was already becoming somewhat of an embarrassment. We had a situation in the Caribbean at the time when Cuba was a major power. It was a time when Jamaica was very close to Cuba, Guyana, and the rest of the Caribbean when Grenada was regarded to some extent, despite the vagaries of Mr Gairy, as not a major problem. The interesting thing is that, at that stage, we were in a period of disengaging from the Caribbean. It was the foreseen as the politically correct thing to be doing. It was not an area of major interest, except in terms of the West Indian population in the United Kingdom. Once the coup took place, we had an extraordinary change in that there was realisation of just how important the area was for America and Canada. For the vast majority of tourists, it is the great getaway place for the Americas and Canadians. In Grenada, the key point of sensitivity was the well-off families’ kids who were there in medical schools. There were about 1,500 of them in Grenada.

We had an extraordinary situation when the crisis occurred because, all of a sudden, the pressure from the United States changed totally the other way. The interesting thing was that they themselves had a major inhibition in terms of actually doing much about the situation in the Caribbean and the instability, because they and South America had become involved in helping the police forces. Allegations of torture had got back to Congress, which passed legislation on the police forces. From a practical point of view, the US was looking to us. The Governments in Dominica and St Lucia were also looking in the Cuba direction.

An event that is not recorded in this splendid calendar of events was a small, nevertheless significant, attempt by a group of Grenadians to invade the Grenadine islands belonging to St Vincent. That was seen off by a splendid St Vincent Chief of Police with his shotgun and colleagues. Nothing came of it, but at the time it caused considerable consternation about the effect it could have. As a result of the coup, I was sent with a Chief Inspector of Overseas Police on a security inspection, which was a trip round five islands in five days, which included a visit to Grenada. As a result of that, we provided assistance to the police forces. We set up a training academy. We established a situation in which many activities became centred round Barbados and, finally, there was a setting up of coastguards.

That was how I became involved, but the interesting thing about the subsequent invasion was the fact that when we did a very quick inventory of interest, the US North American interest in that part of the world was very great. Politically, there was pressure on any US Government if something of that sort occurred, given that the Grenadian Government were close to Cuba and the real hard nuts in that Government could murder the Prime Minister and take over. From the point of view of American citizens, it posed a very real threat.

5

Sir Eric Gairy (1922–97), first Prime Minister of Grenada, 1974–9.

16

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Sutton: I suppose that we knew a great deal about Gairy, but what did we know about the opposition New Jewel Movement, which had decided to become a Marxist-Leninist movement and to keep that decision below the limelight? Can I bring in Tony Thorndike who was certainly around at the time? What did you know of the New Jewel Movement? Did the British Government know anything about it?

Tony Thorndike: I first met Bernard Coard when I was doing work at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. I found myself next door to him. In fact, I accompanied him to Grenada, which was my first visit, when he was campaigning for the September 1976 General Election on that island. It certainly was clear to me that a strong sense of socialism was running through the party. Through Bernard, I met party members such as Bishop and Hudson Austin. Equally, it was imbued with Black Power ideas, but it was not very coherent.

I had a meeting at the British High Commission in Trinidad, although not about Grenada, but the development programmes in the area that I was working on. I got the strong impression that it knew very little indeed about the NJM6 other than the fact that it had joined up in a grand alliance to seek a wider base for tactical reasons. Few people had an idea that it harboured quite strong socialist ideas. There was virtually no knowledge of it having decided in 1975 that it would be a Leninist party, espousing broadly written Marxist ideas. In other words, it was not a Social Democratic party.

Gay: It is a shame that my predecessor, Mike Dibben,7 is not here. He visited Grenada regularly from about 1976 onwards and was certainly aware of the Marxist leanings of the New Jewel Movement. He reported towards the end of his period of visits the arrival of guns in oil barrels and, although he did not make contact himself with Bishop and Coard, he had excellent contacts with Alister Hughes and others who were aware of the New Jewel Movement’s thinking.

When I arrived, I wanted to meet Bernard Coard and Maurice Bishop and, within a week or two, I took them out to lunch on the other side of the island. I was told that Eric Gairy would not particularly like that, but a week or so later I received a phone call saying that the Prime Minister would like to invite me to his nightclub ‘The Red Palace’ for dinner. I said that I would be delighted to attend, and the lady said that that would be $13.50. I met Eric Gairy there and, as well described in the paper, he was very much a ladies’ man. He was very smart and polite. He said that he was glad I had met the Opposition. That was all he said.

He then went on his usual round of the nightclub with an eye for the ladies.

I then decided that I ought to meet Herbert Blaize,8 later the Prime Minister. He called on me a couple of times in St George’s. We had a little house halfway up the hill. In those days, his health was not very good. He did not say very much beyond the fact that he, too, realised that something was afoot. And so it turned out. A few weeks later, I had arranged to fly out to Carriacou9 on 13 March to have coffee with him because he was unwell, and it was a good opportunity to have a chat. I arrived at Pearls Airport.10 There was some shooting. I

6

The New Jewel Movement.

Michael Dibben, FCO, 1966–2000.

8 Herbert Blaize (1981–9), Chief Minister of Grenada, 1962–7; Prime Minister, 1984–9.

9 Just to the north of the main island of Grenada is Carriacou and Petite Martinique, which is a dependency.

10 Pearls Airport was the main airport of Grenada at the time.

7

17

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

wandered around and asked what was going on. They said, ‘Oh, somebody was just doing a robbery’. My little plane arrived. I landed in Carriacou and was then told that a coup had taken place. There I was, sitting in the middle of Carriacou. I had coffee with Herbert Blaize who thought that he might be invited to join the government. As you know, he did not receive such an invitation, but he seemed relatively calm about the matter. I remained on Carriacou for, I think, two days and then Maurice Bishop, urged by Harry Stanley,11 sent off a plane and I flew back to St George’s.

By that time, the NJM were firmly in control as it had, in effect, been from the first day. I simply sat there and wondered what to do next. Harry Stanley came over and we then arranged a meeting, which is reported here with both Maurice Bishop and Coard. I was always slightly aware of a little tension between them. Bishop was an extremely attractive personality to most people. Coard was very much a thinker. They were both very worried because they were aware that Eric Gairy, for all his faults, was extremely popular with the old groups around the west of the island. ‘Uncle Eric’ mattered to those groups. After all, he was the man who had basically broken the power of the plantocracy. He had marched into a hotel, leading a group of servants and released the West Indian servants who were doing 15-hour days. There was a great deal of residual popularity among a group of Grenadians, which was probably reflected in the nervousness and inevitable cautiousness of Coard and Bishop.

It was rather curious when Harry Stanley came over when I first met Maurice Bishop, it was assumed that Bernard Coard would be there as well. There is probably some significance in the fact that he was not, in that he wished to be seen separately and alone, as he was four days later.

Sutton: Let us move on to the coup itself and the responses to it of Britain and the United States.

Records show that, by and large, Britain accepted the situation in Grenada. The American response is generally interpreted as being a bit tougher. Will Ambassador Rossin state what he understood to be the American response and why he thought that it might be a bit more vigorous than the British response?

Rossin: I was not there at the time of the coup, so my knowledge is based on a study of the diplomatic records at the time and from talking to Frank Ortiz12 and others who were there at the time.

As for the US response, obviously there was a lot of unhappiness about the fact that there was a coup in an area of the world where coups were not expected. It was not Africa, but the British Caribbean with its parliamentary traditions and so on. It was not particularly viewed initially as a danger to Americans, for example, who were there nor was it necessarily viewed as something that had to have a bad outcome.

The American analysis of the New Jewel Movement and of Gairy is something along the lines of what Mr Thorndike said. Some social restrain was known, after all Bernard Coard had come from Jamaica, there were influences of the Workers Party and Trevor Munroe,13 and that sort of thing. The analysis was also that Bishop was more a socialist, coming from his LSE days—if I can put it that way—here in the UK in the 1970s. He was more authentic

11

Henry S.H.C. Stanley (1920–95), UK High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago and (non-resident) to Grenada, 1977-80.

12 Frank Vincent Ortiz, Jr (1926–2005), American Ambassador to Barbados, and Grenada, 1977–9.

13 Trevor Munroe, Jamaican politician and academic. Founder and sometime General Secretary of the Workers Party of Jamaica (WPJ).

18

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

in a certain way. There was a mix of Black Power and some British socialism of the 1960s and 1970s coming back. There was also habitation in a certain way with those in the New Jewel Movement who were perhaps under a more clearly Marxist-Leninist influence, which was after all the Workers Party. Not only was Coard himself, but Phyllis Coard (his wife) and Richard Jacobs14 were also associated with it. A group of Jamaicans and a couple of Guyanese who were much clearer Marxists were involved.

From talking to Ortiz about the matter as I did a number of years ago when I wrote a paper on the subject and from reading all the diplomatic traffic, which I did at a certain point, I learned that there was unhappiness that there was a coup. There was concern about the predilections of the people and what that might imply. The concern grew quickly when there were cagey answers about elections, but there was not necessarily an inclination right off the bat to be hostile to the event, but to see what could be made of it. The fact that Gairy was such an unattractive character was brought on himself in a certain sense. It manifested itself from the start with expressed preoccupations of Bishop, Coard and the others were whether Gairy would come back and do something. The US was quite content not only to assure but to take the minimal steps that would be required to ensure that Gairy did not come back and do anything. It was actually an open-minded approach at the first moment. It was cautious, not happy, but one that was certainly willing to have a look and see how the situation would evolve.

Sutton: I would be careful about the LSE! It is always providing decent people. Phyllis Coard was also a student at the LSE, and that was on the opposite side. Will Patsy say something about how the Caribbean saw the coup?

Robertson: I should step back a bit from Grenada. By the time it blew up, the US had already been very active in Jamaica against Michael Manley.15 Huge efforts had been made to destabilise him.

Jamaica was flooded with guns during the 1970s—from which we are still suffering. That has been documented and, in fact, I read an article—it might have been in the New Yorker—that a Freedom of Information inquiry had shown a decision that was taken at the time of the coup against Allende not to bother with Jamaica. That was because Michael [Manley] had decided there was no reason why Jamaica should not have relations with Cuba, 90 miles away.

Hundreds of Jamaicans still live in Cuba, a fellow Caribbean country that provides us with doctors, but we had the power of American destabilisation.

When the coup occurred in Grenada, it was not true that America was relaxed. They cut off bilateral aid immediately and refused to allow their contributions to the Caribbean to go to Grenada. The scene was set. It was not going to be tolerated. The new Grenada-Cuba axis was not going to be allowed. The plotting and the planning had already begun because, by 1980, Edward Seaga16 was elected Prime Minister of Jamaica and he was very close to the United States. I will not say anything now as we are being taped, but there was a feeling that he was one of those people who were very much involved in keeping American interests alive. He was the big architect of the invasion, but that is another story.17 The British Government were reasonably relaxed. They felt that there was no need to

14

Author (with Ian Jacobs) of Grenada: Route to Revolution (1979).

Michael Manley (1924–97), Prime Minister of Jamaica, 1972-80; and 1989-92.

16 Edward Seaga (1929–2019), Prime Minister of Jamaica, 1980-9.

17 Seaga’s account: The Grenada Intervention: The Inside Story (2009).

15

19

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

take any great action against Maurice Bishop at the time. The Americans were quite emphatic and that is recorded.

Sutton: John Edwards, how did Mrs Thatcher and the Government respond not only to the coup, but to the developing relations in Grenada, the Movement at the time and to the increasing American concern with it? Did you counsel moderation? Did you try to provide other sources of information?

Edwards: I did not have any political responsibility for relations with Grenada until I became Head of WIAD18 in 1981. However, I had an aid responsibility with the British Development Division that covered Grenada as it did the Associated States and the Dependent Territories in the Eastern Caribbean.

I echo what others have said about Gairy. I had some dealings with him. He was not always a very rational man. He had an obsession with Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), which he would raise at the UN. That was one of his oddities. A reasonably fair comment is that it was not a very clean and decent regime. On the aid side, we had signed an agreement with Grenada at the time of independence. In 1980, we announced—as your summary points out—that that agreement would be honoured and that there would be no attempt to cut it off.

Our aid involvement was of a lesser degree than it was with the Associated States. We were particularly involved with the Windward Islands banana development programme, which was an over-arching activity that covered all the islands that grew bananas. However, bananas were not nearly as important to Grenada as they were, say, to St Lucia because it grew nutmeg and other spices.

However, come 1981, we said that there would be no new agreement for aid to Grenada once the independent agreement had been wholly dispersed. I visited the other islands regularly, but went to Grenada only irregularly. It was much more detached from our relationships on the aid side and the Associated States.

Sutton: Can I bring in Sir Sydney Giffard to say how Grenada might have fitted into the wider USUK relationship at the time?

Giffard: I came rather too late on the scene to comment on matters before the actual emergency period. We had no feeling in the office that another Cuban missile crisis was at hand.

Sutton: Sir Bernard Ingham, do you have anything to say about the wider relationship between the United States and the UK under Mrs Thatcher? Obviously, a lot of people said that it was quite close at the time. We shall be discussing the actual events of the invasion later on.

Ingham: In general, Margaret Thatcher found her mission in life in 1981 when President Reagan19 came to office. After Jimmy Carter,20 she had sort of been all over the show. She saw it as her

18 19

Head, West Indian and Atlantic Department, FCO, 1981–4, Ronald Reagan (1911–2004), US President, 1981–8.

20

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

job to support the leader of the free world as best she could, but her concept of friendship and her support was altogether Spartan. She did not believe that a person was a friend unless that friend gave their honest, candid advice. Therefore, while at times some might have said that the relationship between Reagan and Thatcher looked to be fairly servile at times, it was anything but. It was really quite lively and, sometimes, thoroughly enjoyable.

Margaret Thatcher had the great ability to tell people off in the bluntest possible way without giving terminal offence. It would have been very difficult to give terminal offence to President Reagan, who was the sunniest man alive at the time. She did not mince words with her colleagues, but in a curious way they tolerated that because they reckoned that she was pretty straight with it, quite apart from Mr Gorbachev21 who just liked arguing! Let us not kid ourselves that the tremendous ructions over Grenada caused any damage to her relations with President Reagan as such. It was something that she recognised that relationships had to go through, but they survived. They probably survived all the more because she was so frank about matters.

Sutton: I am still not getting a sense of similarity or differences in British policy. No one has yet said that Britain was doing one thing, the United States was doing another. Gary, did you think that there were two different policies? Were they convergent or divergent?

Williams: At the beginning around about the coup time, as Larry [Rossin] said, the Americans were certainly cautious. They were willing to help, however, and waiting to see how things unfolded. The British were a bit more relaxed and less concerned about that. Looking at the documents, I saw the phrase ‘heavy-handed’ in regard to the American approach to the People’s Revolutionary Government, and they became concerned about that. Perhaps a month or so after the coup, the Americans adopted a regional strategy. They increased aid to Grenada’s neighbours and let the likes of Barbados and Jamaica and the other islands pressure Grenada on the key issue of elections.

For the Americans, Cuba was a big factor. It played out, especially on the PRG22 side.

They set out to steer towards Cuba and were not pushed. The thesis that the US policy pushed Grenada towards Cuba is quite wrong. The UK policy was more relaxed. It was willing to remain engaged with Grenada. As John said, the aid commitments were honoured. Other aid programmes continued. The UK also established a permanent post for John Kelly and his predecessors in Grenada, which none of the other Western countries did. It seemed a much more relaxed policy. The interesting thing was what sort of pressure did America put on the UK in terms of their policy approach and what sort of influence that had. I do not know whether any gentleman round the table can shed more light on that.

Sutton: Yes, I shall ask people particularly from the Foreign Office if they felt that there was a real distinction or not much of one between UK policy leading up to the revolution in 1979 to 1982-83. Was it discussed very much? Since we were so familiar with the area, were things in black and white?

20

Jimmy Carter, US President, 1977–81.

Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet and then Russian leader, 1985–91.

22 Provisional Revolutionary Government of Grenada.

21

21

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Chase: Essentially, it was hoped that Bishop would be kept in dialogue. There was a possibility of the thing coming out right. When I was first sent out on the security round, I even had authority to discuss with those in the Bishop Administration the possibilities of assistance on that front. As time went on, as it says in the background papers, there was in some Caribbean countries—particularly Barbados—a real concern about what might happen. As I said, there was the incident at St Vincent. We ended up with a dual policy when we were still hoping that we could keep the Bishop regime on an even keel not in a position when it became totally dependent on Cuba.

At the same time, there was a sudden realisation that, on average, few islands had any military force. Jamaica and Trinidad. Trinidad had most of the islands. It was a small police force. If you went there on a Sunday with 15 armed men, you could just take over the islands.

You were dealing with a police force of 60 or so. There was a sudden realisation that, if people were not going to play the democratic political voting game, there was very little to stop the rot spreading.

To start with, there was, ‘Let’s not rock the boat’ and, ‘This was a one-off’ and, ‘Really, they are quite nice lads from the LSE and so on, we can talk with them.’ Then came the realisation that actually, if there were similar ambitions elsewhere and given how the islands were resourced in terms of security forces, there was nothing to stop a whole series of such events. That was when the pressure came for setting up the police academy and some minor reinforcing of the police forces with training and other assistance—and the setting up of the coastguard, which was a reaction to the rowing boats that went out to St Vincent. We did see a gradual change, nevertheless the intention on the British side was absolutely minimalist.

When I went on my security visit, I first ended up with a session in Miami with the drug administration after which time I went to Washington. I realised that the Americans took matters quite seriously because there was me, a police adviser and a third secretary from our embassy, but there were 40 on the American side, including full admirals, generals and everything else. Clearly, from their point of view, they were taking matters enormously seriously. By the time I got back from the visit I had to go straight to the Minister of State.

There was a feeling of certain pressure that, obviously the Americans were taking the matter and others situations in the Caribbean seriously because they could see that, if it became a precedent, they would have a real worry with the small islands of St Vincent, Dominica and so on.

Edwards: We must remember that, at the time of coup, all the other islands were Associated States and we were responsible for their foreign affairs and defence. In terms of our relationship with the US, we were anxious to get away from the anomalous position where we had responsibility without the power. There was a feeling in the US Administration that it could be a dangerous disengagement because, while we were responsible for foreign affairs and defence, something like the coup of March 1979 perhaps could not happen. The process started and Dominica went on until 1983. I am searching my memory, but there was a concern in Washington that we were pulling back and that created a power vacuum that could be filled by others. To some extent, the coup in Grenada highlighted the difference of approach between the two Governments.

22

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Rossin: I would like to pick on that theme because it is relevant to the discussion. Mr Chase talked about the sudden realisation that took place, which was really the coup and the incident on St Vincent that he described. Prior to those incidents, there was a difference of perception about Cuba and Jamaica, as Mrs Robertson described, where there was a lot of concern about where Manley was heading and the relationship with Cuba. I recall a book that was written about that time. It was a colourful, fictional book about World War Three. I remember that it pictured future Jamaican and Cuban troops fighting together in Africa against American troops. That was the mentality that was going on.

However, the Eastern Caribbean was not really part of that. Up until the coup in Grenada, one of the things that I found interesting when I worked in the Embassy, for example, was that for almost all the US agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI and those that covered even matters like social security administration, the Eastern Caribbean was run out of some domestic office of the United States. So many people from the Caribbean islands are living in the United States and going back and forth that what was happening was almost like a domestic extension. It is also so close to the United States. That does not mean that we were trying to run the place, but the perception was that the interests always flowed that way.

Until the incidents that Mr Chase described, notably the coup in Grenada, I do not think that the Eastern Caribbean was very high on the agenda. We did not have representations in any of the islands. The Ambassadors who were sent there were political people. We did not send the top diplomats there. It just did not have that priority. Both the written and oral records of the time indicate that, in the first period after the coup, there was an open attitude. It is important to look at the history of both American and British reactions to the events in Grenada almost day by day from the day of the coup until the first six-week period. Things were happening rapidly, and people were filling out the big picture they had of what Bishop and Coard were like and what they might do when they were in power. We then did see a divergence between the British and the American viewpoint, with the Americans having concerns about Cuba and Cold War things, as well as Nicaragua23. What was happening in the area round them were preoccupations for the United States, while there was the British distancing policy.

I agree with some of the preoccupation for Washington. When I was in the area, we were always concerned about what we considered to be a working muddle, such as it was just going to push independence off on to the first guy on the island who says that he wants it, and move on, and leave things to its own devices. Such an approach was creating a vacuum and there was worry about that, which of course the Grenada coup brought into focus as well as the reactions described by Mr Chase.

Kelly: I wish to make a point about the consequence of the coup and the independence of the Bahamas in 1973. What happened in Grenada resulted in the British Government changing their policy on the granting of independence. Until then, it had been a political party with a manifesto and an election where independence was the main plank, but after Bahamas and the coup in Grenada the year before and independence, the policy changed to a referendum to ensure that the majority of people on the island wanted independence. That was a significant consequence of what went on in Grenada and the Bahamas.

In 1979 the Sandinista’s overthrew the Samoza-led regime in Nicaragua. During the 1980s, US sought to support the opposition, known as the Contras.

23

23

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Robertson: The Commonwealth took the coup very seriously. Ramphal, who was Secretary-General, went immediately to Grenada to see Bishop to persuade him to hold an election because he thought that it would legitimise the Government. Well, Bernard Coard was very much against that, although he set up a Caribbean Advisory Group of distinguished Caribbean people. The Commonwealth took it very seriously and was actively trying to bring representative government back to Grenada as quickly as possible.

We also knew that the Eastern Caribbean Governments were really shaken because they did not want anything like that to happen. Those who had High Commissioners in London asked the British Government either to intervene or to sever diplomatic links with Grenada. They wanted Grenada to be forced back to legitimacy. The High Commissioners told us that the British Government’s response was that Britain recognised states not governments and since Sir Paul Scoon,24 the Governor-General, had been retained and was representative of the Queen, diplomatic links would continue. That summed up the British Government’s approach at the time.

Thorndike: By 1981, in my discussions with both British and American diplomats, you could see two quite different priorities. The British were much more concerned about the human rights situation in Grenada, starting with the lack of elections but, in particular, the detainees, and the lack of fair trials and due process. The Americans were becoming obsessed—although perhaps that is too strong a word—with Cuba. We must not forget that, by 1981, the Caribbean Basin is in the forefront of American thinking. There was Nicaragua. Jamaica had been sorted out, but there was Cuba, which was very active. There was Grenada. There was Guyana and the development of the idea of a Cuban-Soviet nexus operating at the heart of the Caribbean Basin certainly seemed—to me anyway—to be taking root with the American diplomats to whom I spoke. It did not seem to have cut much ice with the Brits though.

Sutton: I remember giving evidence to a Foreign Affairs Committee on Central America and the Caribbean in 1982. It might seem a bit odd for the FAC to be addressing Central America and the Caribbean, after all Central America was not an established British concern. Nevertheless, it was being talked about simply because of its importance to the United States. I had recently been in Grenada and I was questioned by the Committee. Perhaps it was an ideological distinction, but the Labour Party people were very pro what was going on in Grenada and the Conservative members of the Committee were very anti.

The recommendations of the Committee were that Britain should stop looking at the issue of Grenada both as a north-south and an east-west issue, but largely as an issue of under-development and that we should establish a distinctive policy different from that of the United States to the area. When the report was published and the Foreign Office responded, none of those issues were mentioned.25 The Foreign Office ducked the issue on that one, but that is just my own biased interpretation and remembrance of the event at the time.

Can we now move on to the events closer to the death of Maurice Bishop and the

24

Sir Paul Scoon (1935–2013), Governor General of Grenada, 1978–92.

See House of Commons, Fifth Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee, Session 1981–82, Caribbean and Central America. Together with an Appendix; part of the Proceedings of the Committee relating to the Report; and the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee with Appendices (1982).

25

24

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

subsequent US action in Grenada? John Kelly was the only person resident in Grenada at the time—for the UK. I do not know whether any other diplomats were stationed there.

Kelly: The Russian Embassy was growing. There were representatives from a number of other Eastern European countries, and there were lots of frequent visits by senior people from leftwing, socialist countries, such as Mozambique. The [North] Korean [Ambassador] was scheduled to come. In some of his trips overseas, Maurice Bishop would frequently visit all those countries. He struck a deal with North Korea for a $1 million loan. He had a big loan from Libya. At one time after he came back from his visit to the US, Bernard Coard was writing to Libya asking for the balance amount. They had lots of aid from Algeria at the time.

It was all coming in, and that was their orientation.

I went there in December 1982 and the atmosphere in Grenada at that time was changing. The verbal support for the revolution that had taken off in 1979 was much diminished throughout all levels of society. There were people who, when they visited my office and could speak securely, would condemn what was going on. They were very concerned about the increasing number of Russians, for example. The Embassy had opened in early 1982, while in September 1983, 12 Russian teachers came on the island, which was of concern to us. They dislodged some of the other Commonwealth teachers who had been working there. The reason for that was that the Grenadian Government was under some pressure to identify good material for scholarships in the Soviet Union. They had about 250 to 300 students in Cuba at the time, but the number of students who had been sent to the Soviet Union over the period of the revolution had not been given high regard by the Soviets or by East Germany, where there were some as well.

The East Germans were active in putting in a new telephone system. There was a range of such things going on. Lots of people from Britain, from left-wing organisations, visited and took parties out to Grenada to see the new participatory democracy that was supposed to be taking place in action. Jeremy Corbyn MP26 was a frequent visitor. When I was there, he brought out a group from Sheffield. Nigel Spearing MP27 was interested in Grenada and visited it during my time. George Galloway28 was involved through his War on Want charity.29 There was worry about how left wing it was all going.

In January and February 1983, the business community and ordinary mortals on the island began to realise that the supreme authority in Grenada was not Maurice Bishop, the hero of the people, but the Bureau. People had not realised until that stage that the party system in place was actually stronger than the Cabinet. In about June 1983, I received a list of the NJM members. There were only 17 members of the New Jewel Movement, while there were about 300 associate members. They were running the country and had a say in it.

Another LSE luminary, Robert Grant,30 was a great friend of Maurice Bishop when he was at college here. He was also a lawyer and brought back by Maurice Bishop to take over as Attorney General, but when he got to Grenada, he could not align himself with some of the things that he was asked to sign into law. We must bear in mind that no Parliament was sitting. The laws were done through a Public Laws Decree, signed by Maurice Bishop. Once it was published, that was the law. Robert Grant could not take that on. He fell out within a

26

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour MP for Islington North, 1983–.

Nigel Spearing (1930–2017), Labour MP, 1970–97.

28 George Galloway, Labour MP, 1987–2003; Respect MP, 2003–15.

29 War on Want, a British anti-poverty organisation: https://waronwant.org/ [Accessed 3 Feb. 2020] 30 Robert Grant, later leader of Grenada’s New Democratic Party.

27

25

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

month of his arriving, and he went into private practice and stayed on the island. He subsequently stood for election but did not get in.

Other British people had gone out to help the revolution. People in the UK were sending money to support it. All of that began to stop. The economy was shot to pieces in 1983. All of the available funds were going into building the airport. Cuba funded a great deal of that, but whatever spare cash the Government could find, it went into completing the airport, which was the big project and was to come on stream in 1984. The Government curtailed a lot of travel by many of the Ministers and officials. For example, instead of sending a big delegation to the International Labour Organisation annual event, the trade commissioner went. Maurice Bishop visited the United States for 11 days in June and that gave people great optimism that something good would come out of it. However, nothing much did. He came back in the middle of June. He said that his visit was a great success.

However, he had not really seen anyone, but it was a notable departure from the way in which they had been treating America to that point.

The big thing that struck me when I arrived in Grenada was how vitriolic the antiWestern imperialist vitriol was. I was invited to many party and fellowship meetings. I had asked Maurice Bishop whether I could attend such meetings and he said, ‘By all means.’

There were times when I felt like walking out on behalf of America, not Britain, because of the terrible things that were being said. Victor Husbands31 had been a friend of Gairy. I think that I described him as the Vicar of Bray at the time. He had moved in support of the revolution.

Other optimistic things were happening. In June 1983, Maurice Bishop signed into law a Constitutional Commission. Victor Husbands was the Secretary of that organisation. It had mainly party people on it. Merle Collins32 was to be the representative of the National Women’s Organisation. A chap called Ashley Taylor33 was to be the chairman. It was not due to report for 24 months, but the idea was that the Commission would make recommendations that would be put to the NJM about the future parliamentary elections in Grenada. It was a movement in the right direction, albeit a very controlled movement. There were lots of incidents of that type of event. I attended budget discussions in March of that year. We broke up into workshops and people discussed different aspects of what Bernard Coard had presented in the budget. I participated in it and gave my ideas as well. We were able to be involved to that extent.

The mood was changing. The revolution had lost a lot of its impetus. The economy was shattered and the NJM began to look for the fall guy in it all. The navel gazing that continued throughout the months from February to September in 1983 pinpointed Maurice Bishop and led to the need for joint leadership. He went on his last overseas trip at the end of September to East Germany. I do not know whether he went to the USSR, but he came back via Cuba to the island on about 10 October and said that he had changed his mind about the joint leadership. That is how I understand it happened. The party was not happy with that.

There were rumours supposedly from Maurice Bishop that Bernard Coard and Phyllis were arranging for his demise. He was taken to task about that.

At about 10 or 11 October when Maurice Bishop returned, I began to hear that he was in trouble and that he was under house arrest. One incident was brought to my attention on 12 October. It was broadcast at 15 minutes past midnight, when the radio stations had only been shut for an hour, to members of the party. It was made by the Comrade Leader to show that

31

Victor Husbands, Grenadian police officer.

Merle Collins, Grenadian poet and later academic based in the UK and then USA. 33 Ashley Taylor, Attorney General of Grenada.

32

26

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

he was still okay. He spoke to them about the discussions on joint leadership. That was the day when someone put a note through my door saying that London needs to help, and that Maurice Bishop was under house arrest. The Minister for Tourism resigned on the same day and, at that stage, I advised Bridgetown and contacted David Montgomery. Things were beginning to hot up, but no one until that time could have expected the turn of events that happened over the next few weeks. It was completely out of the blue.

Sutton: We still got the impression up until 1982 that there were still possibilities of engagement with the Government, but I get from what you are saying that, from 1983, that had really passed by.

Kelly: With the UK, yes. There were ongoing matters. They had run down our aid programme.

When I got there in December 1982, there was just one outstanding aid programme. It was a school that had been built to the north of St George’s. We were discussing with them technical co-operation officers. We had offered them a civil aviation adviser and for many weeks I was pressing the same Minister of Tourism Lyden Ramdhanny34 responsible for aviation to accept the civil aviation adviser. After some weeks, he told me that he could not accept the offer because they wanted someone to manage the new airport and we were not prepared to take that on. The offer of the adviser was still there, and we were also discussing other technical co-operation officers and the return of VSOs35 to the island. Optimistic things were happening in the relationship with Britain.

If things had carried on without the collapse of the Government, I am sure that in the next year or so we would have begun to see some other positive changes. They desperately needed something to happen. Tourism was down. Agriculture was down. Unemployment was up, so they would have had to turn to the West eventually to bail themselves out. They would not continue accepting the sort of aid that they were getting, particularly from Eastern Europe. I mentioned the East German telephone system that was being put in. That was state of the art 1950s whereas, after the collapse of the revolution, the Canadians came in and Motorola put in state of the art 1983 equipment. I think that the East Germans sent 65 trucks and some tractors. The Russians sent huge tractors to the island. They could hardly be used because the terrain on the island did not lend itself to big tractors. A lot of the aid from Eastern Europe was wasted.

Sutton: I remember the time that Bernard Coard had gone to the IMF. I had a PhD student who studied the economy of Grenada and, until early 1983, things were happening.

Kelly: He had $1 million loan from OPEC and a facility from the IMF in May or June 1983. It was done falsely. The IMF team came down. It did its study and presented draft figures to the Ministry of Finance. Bernard Coard did not like the draft figures and the team was asked to stay on for another week, after which new figures were produced. There was a British adviser at the Ministry of Finance at the time, and he told me the truth: the figures showed what the economy was really like and what the population was. The Revolutionary Government

34 35

Lyden Ramdhanny, Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation (1981–3).

Voluntary Service Overseas www.vso.org.uk/ [Accessed 3 Feb. 2020].

27

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

always presented the population as being 110,000. That was critical with the IMF. If there were more than 100,000 people in the country, it is eligible for a different tranche of aid.

However, the businesspeople on the island told me that the population was not 110,000, but that it was no more than 89,000. When I asked him how he knows, I recall Fred Toppin,36 one of the managers of one of the big supermarkets on the island, saying that he could tell from the sale of ice creams. He put the number at 89,000. The IMF did give a big facility that year, but it was under a false premise.

Sutton: David Montgomery, do you have something to say about Grenada just prior to Maurice Bishop’s imprisonment and subsequent death?

David Montgomery: As a matter of historical record, it must be checked whether the usual movement existed as an Opposition party to Gairy. The New Jewel Movement did not come into being until about 1977 when Bishop and his humanitarian colleagues ousted a nice man, Teddy Victor,37 the leading light in an organisation called the Jewel.38 Bishop and Coard were part of a thing called the Movement for the Assemblies of the People. That movement did not exist in Gairy’s time.

It is not every day that we hear a senior American diplomat introducing a note of realism into the debate, but Ambassador Rossin who had the benefit, like myself, of being on the island when the shooting was in progress seems to know what he is talking about. He hinted—it accords with my view—that the United States was not particularly fussy about a mosquito-infested pimple in the Caribbean called Grenada. They had other things to think about in Central and Southern America, which were much more. They were not worried about what was happening in Grenada until the North Koreans, the Soviet Union and the East Germans established Embassies there. They cost very little, but they caused mild consternation in Washington. Communist embassies on their doorstep! They had to have another look at what was happening. I entirely agree with Ambassador Rossin.

As for the lack of reliable information about what was happening within the Politburo and the Central Committee, and why very little emerged until it was almost too late, that was largely due to the astonishing feat achieved by the PRG, rather like what happened in recent times with British MPs in the House of Commons. They did not know that there was anything wrong until recently. The secret had been kept. The PRG succeeded in keeping its very serious internal troubles secret. Hardly anyone in Grenada could say anything that sounded reliable. I am sure that that does not include John Kelly?

Sutton: I was about to ask him.

Montgomery: That was my opinion about why very little was known.

As for what Britain could do and whether we were concerned about it, of course not.

Why in the name of god would we be interested in Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and

36

Fred Toppin, Head of the Chamber of Commerce, Grenada.

Teddy Victor (1944–2008).

38 Victor was a founding member of a group which called itself the Joint Endeavour for Welfare, Education, and Liberation (JEWEL) from March 1972, which later spawned the New Jewel Movement.

37

28

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

nuisances in the Caribbean? In any case, you cannot have a policy in any part of the world unless you are in a position to do something about it, and we were not. It took weeks and months for the operation in the Falklands to be mounted, so how could we have done anything in Grenada within a few days, and the few days that were being demanded by the other Caribbean Governments—particularly those members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States? We could not do anything. Any hint that we were taking an interest or that it mattered to Britain was just hypocrisy.

Gay: I attended an Anglo-American meeting at the Foreign Office on my return to London. Sir Nicholas Ridley39 was present and said quite clearly to the American delegation, ‘Grenada is in your backyard’, to which the reply was, ‘Well, we could say that Eastern Europe is in yours’. That was the attitude.

Kelly: I wish to answer David Montgomery’s question about the New Jewel Movement. The Jewel Movement was set up by Unison Whiteman40 in the 1960s when he came back to the island.

The Movement of the Assemblies of People was set up by Maurice Bishop in 1972. On 11 March 1973, they had a joint meeting in St David’s Parish and formed the New Jewel Movement.

Montgomery: Well before the coup.

Kelly: Six years before the coup. They had the meeting in St David’s, and they had a mock trial of Lord Brownlow41 whose estate was on La Sagesse. He had put a barrier across the road down to his beach where people had been used to going regularly. They found him guilty. They all marched down and tore down the barrier across the road. That was the first action of the New Jewel Movement.

Sutton: Let us come to the time when Bishop is held under house arrest. I presume that the situation is being reported back to London. John Edwards, I think that you were in charge at that time.

How were you responding to the news of Bishop’s arrest and the beginning of difficult events?

Edwards: We were obviously in very close touch with our High Commission in Barbados for an assessment of what was going on. Immediately and over the significant weekend of the 22nd and 23rd, one of the things that concerned Ministers most of all was the safety of British citizens on Grenada and what threats they might face. It was very much in the Prime Minister’s mind, too. Our prime responsibility was to ensure the safety of British citizens.

There was fairly early discussion about the possibilities of moving the Belize guard ship, HMS Antrim, to a suitable position. That occurred over the weekend, but we were concerned

39

Sir Nicholas Ridley (Lord Ridley of Liddesdale, 1929–93), Financial Secretary to the Treasury, 1979–83.

Unison Whiteman (1939–83), Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1979–83.

41 E.J.P. Cust, 7th Baron Brownlow (1899–1978).

40

29

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

particularly about the safety of British citizens. That was before the meetings of the OECS and subsequently of CARICOM, which formulated the request. Lord Bramall may be able to comment on that, but our only resource in the area was HMS Antrim.

Bramall: We did divert the Antrim and we flew out a company of Gurkhas to Trinidad to join Antrim, purely if necessary, to evacuate British or possibly even American citizens if trouble impinged on their safety. That was done on 22 October.

Edwards: Yes, the Saturday.

Bramall: There was no question in the military mind. I shall have more to say when you come on to the American invasion. There was no question of the British having a military operation to restore democracy, for instance. That was not considered. The Antrim and the Gurkhas were there to take off people if they were in danger.

Sutton: We have now reached the point where Bishop was killed. It was quite a remarkable set of events. John Edwards, what was the response in London as soon as we received the news that he had been killed?

Edwards: Concern, and the need to find out more about what was going on through our High Commission in Barbados. Our Embassy in Washington was doing its best to get alongside our colleagues at the State Department about the likely American reaction. One of the problems facing our embassy in Washington was that its natural contacts were with colleagues in the State Department and the decisions that were taken over the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd were taken primarily by the National Security Council and the Special Situations Group.

As an aside, I subsequently talked to my opposite number at the State Department about what was going on over that crucial weekend. He said, ‘Not a lot’. Getting a clear perception in London of what the US reaction would be was always one of the problems.

Policies were being made within the White House system. That was my understanding. We really did not know what was happening. We were in great doubt about what the US would do over that period. That remained the case until the letter and the famous telephone call between Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan. Hence, the Secretary of State’s statement that said rightly we had no reason to believe that the Americans would intervene.

Sutton: A Mr Mark Pellew is in the audience. He was at the British Embassy in Washington at the time.

Mark Pellow: Yes. I was the Congressional Counsellor at the Embassy. My particular role was to talk to the Congress on Government Hill. It is absolutely true what John Edwards said.

The State Department—perhaps Ambassador Rossin can confirm it—were sometimes not in the loop. I shall give an interesting example of that: on Friday 21 October, I was asked by a member of staff what I would think if the United States were to invade Grenada in a few 30

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

days’ time. I said, ‘You are not really going to do that, are you?’ He said, ‘Well, actually the White House told the Congressional leadership this afternoon that plans were being developed to do just that.’

I asked about the reaction was from the leadership, and my informant, Peter Galbraith,42 said, ‘Speaker Tip O’Neill43 asked what Mrs Thatcher thought about it?’ Reagan looked sideways, no one said anything. Reagan said, ‘Well, I don’t think we have told her.’

That was how the position looked on that Friday afternoon. I went straight back to the Embassy and reported it to Derek Thomas,44 my boss. He sent a report to London that evening. So London had that information in addition to that mentioned in Michael’s excellent summary of all the contacts with the State Department. The State Department was just telling Robin Renwick45 and Derek Thomas, ‘Well, we don’t think anything is being done’.

Sutton: I wonder if I can come to Lord Bramall. There were lots of officers in America.

Bramall: I have a lot to say on your question 12! I was the only person here who was at the meeting in the afternoon of 24 October. Do you want me to describe that? I have a lot to say about that because I know what happened word for word. I hope to introduce some jocularity into it also, but it will wrap up all the various things that have been mentioned about a certain amount of American secrecy and our feeling that the situation was not as bad as some people made it out to be.

Sutton: What I was really trying to tease out was the links of the US and the UK in America. There are British officers in Norfolk, Virginia. They must have known what the Americans were doing. I wondered where the information was going—or not going—at the time, and whether there was an official channel. I take it not.

Rossin: I have a small American perspective. I was in the State Department at the time in the Assistant Secretary’s office, following events in Grenada. I had visibility, although I would not claim that I was part of the policy planning process. What Mr Edwards said also applied to the United States. John was the only actual Western diplomat on the island. The American Embassy was a Non-Resident Embassy and detailed factual knowledge you have when you have an Embassy on the ground was not always available. In fact, John was one of the people whom the US Embassy would call to find out what was going on. It is important, when considering how the British Government were interacting with the American Government at the time, to bear in mind that the American Government themselves were trying to figure out what was going on there, too, from the moment of the coup. The State Department did the usual thing of setting up a task force, but it was mostly to find out what was going on and to follow the situation of the American citizens.

While at working level, the State Department was preparing talking points and

42

Peter W. Galbraith, professional staff member, US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 1979–3.

T.P. ‘Tip’ O’Neill (1912–94), Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, 1977–87.

44 Sir Derek Thomas, Minister Commercial and later Minister, Washington Embassy, 1979–84.

45 Lord Renwick of Clifton (Sir Robin Renwick), Head of Chancery, Washington Embassy, 1981–4.

43

31

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

briefing papers, it was probably not in the actual policy discussion. George Schultz46 and Larry Eagleburger47 were involved in the policy discussion process. That was visible to me. It was not only the NSC and the White House. Because plans were being made to invade, that did not mean that a decision had been made to carry out an invasion. I travelled with Ambassador McNeil48 to Barbados in the chain of events when there were consultations with the Eastern Caribbean countries and sensed that there was a preliminary decision to move forward with military action, but that the final decision was not taken. When I was in Barbados, there could have been a discussion with the Caribbean leaders to see if they were serious about it.

One of the complicating factors, although it did not change the President’s mind, was the bombing in the barracks at Lebanon. That was not a happy event and the Americans already had 200 people killed. Did they want potentially more? It was a dynamic process and, as we look at what the British Government knew about American plans, intentions and knowledge, we must realise that those things themselves were dynamic. It was very much a human endeavour on the American side as well, and one that was peculiar. The United States has always had the policy of universal representation. We have embassies in almost every country that we recognise-more so than any other country in the world. These were a couple of places where the universal representation was not the case. We covered all of those islands from the embassy in Barbados. It is important to walk back from any sense of American vision of where they would end up at the end or anything of that nature. It was a dynamic process.

Sutton: What was your response, John, to news that Bishop had been killed? Did you think that the revolution was imploding at that time? Did you think that the well-set plan by Coard and others was rolling forward?

Kelly: My sense was that it was a pure accident. It should not have happened the way it did. I was in the market square in the morning having an innocent smoke, and he [Unison Whiteman] roused the crowd to release Maurice Bishop. Had he not done that, things would have panned out differently. When Maurice Bishop was brought down, he went to the fort instead of the marketplace. Negotiations with Bernard Coard and the others at Fort Frederick might have happened differently too. There was no knowing what would happen.

My feeling was that the incident was a dreadful calamity, and it was. We did not know until the middle of the afternoon that Maurice Bishop had actually been killed. I was witnessing a lot of the killing that went on in the fort at 1 o’clock. There was a second lot of shooting at about two o’clock, but we did not know what that was about until we learnt about it later. On the Saturday, I saw the doctor who had signed the death certificate and he told me what had happened. Who could have foretold that that would happen?

Sutton: You feel that it was all action taken by people without much foresight?

46

George Schultz, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, 1982–4; and later Secretary of State, 1982–

9.

47 48

Lawrence Eagleburger (1930–2011), US Secretary of State, 1989–92.

Francis J. McNeil, US Ambassador to Costa Rica, 1980–3.

32

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Kelly: Without good planning or consideration of the outcome of their actions at any given time.

Sutton: Tony Thorndike, you interviewed a lot of people about the issue.

Thorndike: The cock-up theory of history. There was a lot of talk about a well-laid conspiracy by the Coards—Bernard being egged on by his wife. I never believed that. I found no evidence of it.

Events moved so fast. The mistake was, as John has said, that if Maurice had gone to the market square and turned right down the hill, as opposed to left up the hill, things would undoubtedly have been completely different. There was no plan. Matters just simply got out of hand. Bishop was insisting on broadcasting to the people and was trying to get a telephone line to the radio mast. Wires were being welded together because everything was broken. It was when he refused to negotiate when certain elements of the army decided that they had to take over control.

I am perhaps in a minority, but I believe that, although Coard was the intellectual brains behind the party and had wanted far greater Leninist edge and leadership and was Mr Efficiency, as was his wife, Mrs Efficiency, there was no order by them at all. They were stuck on the other hill about one and a half miles away. This important event took a momentum of its own.

Sutton: I remember being with a Latin American student at the time it was being relayed, and he said, ‘How different it would have been if it had taken place in South America. What we would have done with the armoured personnel carriers as they came down the street was to have thrown some sugar, flour and then petrol at them. That would have been the end of it.’ The nice thing about the Caribbean is that it is not that sort of society.

Anyway, we have had enough discussion for the moment. Let us break for tea and come back promptly in 15 minutes.

33

King’s College London

Caribbean Witness Seminars

Session 2 Sutton: We have now reached the point at which Maurice Bishop was murdered, and things are beginning to put Grenada well up on the agenda. Gary, will you summarise what the various options were at the time? We can then explore them as we come to the invasion itself.

Williams: Three options were on the table: one was the US, the second was the Organisation of East Caribbean States and the third was the Caribbean Community, CARICOM. I shall start with the US. Until Bishop’s death, the US had started preliminary planning for an evacuation operation of US nationals primarily at the medical school. But when news of Bishop’s death was received, matters changed to a full-scale military intervention as the US realised that an evacuation was no longer feasible. They had one huge piece of luck: a fleet was about to leave from Norfolk on its way to relieve the troops in the Mediterranean. On the 20th, the day after, it was diverted towards Grenada, which was one the major things that made the operation doable.

Even before Bishop’s death, the OECS leader, Tom Adams,49 had met US officials.

Once news of Bishop’s death had been received, the OECS began to float the idea of a military operation to remove the Revolutionary Military Council. Indeed, on the 21st, the OECS approached the Americans with a request to remove the ‘outlaw government in Grenada by any means’. The US received a written invitation to participate in a military operation. Barbados and Jamaica were invited, and the proposal was also sent to France, the UK, Canada and Venezuela. In the outcome, only the US received a written request—so draw your conclusions from that. The UK received an oral request via the High Commission the day after, but nothing else.

The final option on the table was the CARICOM option. Essentially, it ruled out the idea of a military operation and favoured the political, economic sanction route.

Sutton: Thank you, Gary. Let me start in reverse order and look at the CARICOM option. A lot of people have said that the British Government sought to develop that option and saw it as one that they favoured. Is that right? Sir Sydney, was that something that the British Foreign Office was considering or advising on at the time? The British Government were said to be favouring out of the three options that Gary set out an option involving CARICOM. Was that the case?

Giffard: Yes, I would say so.

Sutton: John Edwards, will you comment on that?

49

Tom Adams (1931–85), Prime Minister of Barbados, 1976–85.

34

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Edwards: Since we were not in a position to intervene militarily and not anxious to do so—a fair statement—we were naturally keen that any other opportunity should be explored. The fact that the OECS had developed our view and went to CARICOM to get it on board, but did not succeed, was part of the dynamic situation that was occurring over the weekend. I was at home, and in contact with the Governor of Montserrat50 by telephone, who was a friend as well as a colleague. The first news that I heard of the outcome of the OECS meeting was from John Osborne, the Chief Minister.51 He told the Governor who had to remind him that Montserrat was still an Overseas Dependent Territory and, although he was a member of OECS, he did not have responsibility for foreign affairs and could not commit Montserrat to military intervention. We were aware of what OECS wanted over the weekend, but were hopeful that wiser counsels might prevail when they all went to Trinidad and met within CARICOM states that had been dependent longer and had a more developed mature view of such matters.

Sutton: David Montgomery, what was the view from Barbados about the relative merits of an OECS action and a CARICOM action?

Montgomery: I do not think that anyone who knew anything about the Eastern Caribbean would have believed that any useful decision could come out of CARICOM, particularly because of the political gangster in Georgetown, Guyana, Forbes Burnham,52 and a useless Prime Minister in Trinidad and Tobago—Chambers.53 He had never taken a decision in his life.

Robertson: That is not true.

Montgomery: It is true.

Robertson: Rubbish!

Montgomery: As long as Forbes Burnham and Chambers were attending the meeting—they were quite bit hitters in CARICOM—there was never any hope of reaching a consensus. There were indeed some fairly incredible rumours about Burnham having informed the Revolutionary Military Council of the outcome of the meeting in Trinidad and, hence, that heightened the PRG’s apprehension about an armed intervention.

As for the others in the Eastern Caribbean, Tom Adams in Barbados, Edward Seaga in Jamaica, John Compton54 in St Lucia and the formidable Miss Charles55 in Dominica simply

50

David Dale (1927–2001), Governor of Montserrat, 1980–4.

John Osborne (1936–2011), Chief Minister of Montserrat, 1978–91; 2001–6.

52 Forbes Burnham (1923–85), Premier of Guyana, 1964-6; Prime Minister, 1966–80; President, 1980–5.

53 George Chambers (1928–97), Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, 1981–6, 54 Sir John Compton (1925–2007), Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, 1979; 1982–96; 2006–7.

55 Dame Eugenia Charles (1919–2005), Prime Minister of Dominica, 1980–95.

51

35

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

dismissed the CARICOM meeting. Tom Adams did not even go. They knew what would happen. CARICOM continues to this day to be something of a façade and not of any real importance.

Sutton: Do I take it from you that the view coming from the High Commission in Barbados was that CARICOM would not get anywhere, but the view that I have from the FCO in London is that CARICOM was the best option? We do have a difference of opinion.

Montgomery: You have two different opinions.

Edwards: I do not think that I said it was the best option that we were looking for other than a military intervention and the fact that the Eastern Caribbean States were going down to Trinidad—my friend from Montserrat said that a military intervention would be proposed at the CARICOM meeting. It was all part of the process of trying to avoid an inevitable military intervention.

GIFFARD: The idea that a longer-term attempt to make CARICOM more useful was partly influenced by the fact that we were getting definite replies from Washington to the effect that it was not going to happen. That went on right up to the last minute.

Sutton: Patsy, I am interested in your response to CARICOM. I know that the Commonwealth would have taken that action.

Robertson: The Commonwealth made a great effort to get CARICOM to be more firm on the whole question of bringing about a situation where elections could be held. This is something that must be brought out: in Jamaica, Edward Seaga, who had benefited from the destabilisation of Jamaica and won the election in 1980, was absolutely plotting with the United States by then. He was the first visitor to Reagan in January 1981. Just think of it: a Caribbean leader, the first visitor to the President of the United States. Reagan was making a whole lot of very strong speeches about the situation.

Seaga and Tom Adams, who was another plotter, knew that plans were being laid to have an invasion. I think that they would have probably invaded even if Maurice had not been killed. They were planning because the Caribbean Government really did not want to have the idea of coups taking hold in the Caribbean. They believed in elections. They were poor and unimportant. They were dismissed comprehensively by that gentleman over there, but they were people with a long history. They lived on their islands. They still had a great fondness for Britain. Many still had the Queen as their head of state. The OECS was certainly still hoping that some kind of peaceful means would be found to get Grenada back to a normal constitutional government. In fact, the Commonwealth allowed Maurice Bishop to come to the Lusaka meeting56 at which I think he met Mrs Thatcher and the Queen.57 He made a very good impression. The pressure was on Maurice to call an election and sort the

56 57

Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Lusaka, Zambia, Aug. 1979.

HM Queen Elizabeth II. 36

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

thing out-and, of course, he didn’t do it. Plans were being laid by Edward Seaga with the United States.

Montgomery: At which time?

Robertson: From 1981.

Montgomery: That is rubbish.

Rossin: That is not true.

Robertson: He had pledged to end relations with Cuba. He was fully supported by the United States.

There was a feeling about what had happened in Grenada—the students and so on. It was being planned. I do not care what you say.

Rossin: I base myself only on my experience working on the issue for the US Government on the documentary record. I reviewed every single diplomatic cable sent between the United States and our embassies in the region at the time. Given my knowledge and the conversations that I have had with any number of actors in the region, it was not being planned in 1981.

Furthermore, with regard to the OECS leaders—I witnessed this—I travelled with Ambassador Frank McNeil when he was sent by President Reagan to talk to the OECS leaders because they had received a request for a military intervention, which was not on the cards at that moment. They wanted to know whether the people were serious. The United States did not wish to carry out a unilateral military intervention in Grenada. On the other hand, there were a lot of preoccupations not only with students, but in the case of the United States, there were political considerations.

When Ambassador McNeil met those leaders, it was evident later on when Burnham and Charles showed up in Washington, they were quite adamant that they wanted the United States to do it. It was something that had been carried through from the time of the coup and the OECS attitudes in 1979. They were always uncomfortable with the situation. They always wanted it reversed. They saw a breakdown into generalised disorder in an island just like theirs, which by the way was blamed on the students. The worry in Washington about the students was not that they were being threatened. They were not. It was just that it was so totally chaotic there. They were in a dangerous environment and that was a responsibility.

Sutton: Do I take it from you then that the major option for Washington was with the OECS rather than CARICOM? Rossin: The UK would have shared the analysis that David Montgomery gave you. You would never get any kind of consensus on an issue if you had Forbes Burnham and George Chambers at a meeting.

37

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Bowen Wells: I was a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee who heard evidence on the Grenada affair at the time and afterwards. Both Patsy [Robertson] and Mr Montgomery are right in their own ways. Miss Charles, John Compton and Tom Adams certainly told me that, from the beginning, they knew that they needed to find some way of intervening militarily. They knew that the British did not want to help them, and they were determined to get the Americans to help. That went on from 1980. When Miss Charles came to power in Dominica, having had, of course, a communist-type revolution in Dominica itself. The fact that the British and the Americans were not considering a military intervention is also true, but eventually there was pressure from the democratic countries of the OECS, Dominica and St Lucia. I accept that Tom Adams and Barbados was not OECS, but it was wanting an intervention. Both views were right.

David Lane: I was High Commissioner in the Port of Spain from 1980 to 1985. It was not our high commission at the time that was responsible for relations with Grenada. We became involved when we heard from John Kelly of the house arrest of Maurice Bishop. We immediately told the Trinidad Government about it, and that seemed the first that they knew about the troubles in Grenada. Their attitude then and throughout the crisis was pretty consistent with what it had been in the preceding years, which as David Montgomery said, they had not approved of Eric Gairy and were uneasy about Maurice Bishop.

Eventually, they were shocked by the murder of Maurice Bishop, but they viewed Grenada’s affairs as a matter for Grenadians. Although the Port of Spain is not the most highly populated town in the world, they stayed firm about it and differed markedly from the OECS Governments and the Governments of Barbados and of Jamaica. That was why they were often side-lined. I did not get the impression that Trinidad knew about the military plan.

Perhaps I was wrong, but when the invasion took place, George Chambers complained both in Parliament and on a radio broadcast to the people of Trinidad that it came as a complete surprise to the Trinidadian Government. Their attitude was not really different from that of HMG. They expressed opposition to the invasion, although we had the feeling from the population of the Port of Spain that it was popular. They were kept very out of the loop.

Rossin: There is a distinction between what the OECS and those countries were pressing for. They would not have been informed of the US military intervention. You would not inform many people.

Sutton: Can we move back to Grenada? John Kelly, you had a meeting with Sir Paul Scoon at the time with David Montgomery. What was his reaction to events?

Kelly: I saw Paul Scoon each day. On the day of the killings, I telephoned him to discuss it with him. The next day he asked me if I would get Vaughan Lewis58 to phone him. The meeting to which you referred was attended by David Montgomery, Kenneth Kurze, No. 2 at the

58

Vaughan Lewis, later Prime Ministers of Saint Lucia, 1996–7.

38

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

embassy,59 Linda Flohr,60 a CIA representative. The consul came across to talk to the Revolutionary Military Council that had been set up. The meeting took place on the Sunday morning at which they discussed mainly the protection of the foreigners on the evacuation. I immediately had to take account of that.

My role changed as soon as we had the big problem with the shoot-on-sight curfew. I had to put on my consular hat and concern myself with the British residents on the island.

The curfew was lifted on Saturday morning for four hours. My office was then invaded by lots of Brits who we did not know were on the island, including a lot of Commonwealth and European people who wanted to find out about evacuation flights. We were given assurances by the military that, if evacuation flights were arranged, people would be able to leave. But they were never arranged, except there were four flights left on the Sunday, but there was nothing that we or the Canadians could do. There was a Canadian Aid Officer on the island at the time. His High Commissioner had asked him to stay on. He got a permit to travel during the shoot on sight curfew. I got a permit, as did the OAS representative and a few others. We were a network of people who could travel around the island. I did not travel much, but they used my office as a centre to collect information. The British wardens in the various parishes contacted the citizens who had registered with them. My wife and I called at all the hotels in the St George’s areas to identify who was British and who would want to be evacuated. We were building up lists of people and we were inundated with calls from overseas. The telephone system was functioning strongly, which was how information was getting in and out of the island. As for links with Britain, the Foreign Office had set up an emergency unit, which was in contact with me. I should explain that my office was one man and his wife. We did not even have an official car. It was that bare.

Wells: Did you have a flag?

Kelly: When I went there, Sir Paul Scoon told me to lift the profile a little and fly the flag. When I got to St George’s, I started flying the flag. The Governor-General rang me about three days later to say that he was delighted to see the Union flag flying in St George’s once again. My predecessor had been told to keep a low profile and not fly the flag.

Sutton: Did Sir Paul have a view at the time about what action he wanted?

Kelly: His view was that it would not be solved internally. He was a bit concerned about where it might go to if something did not happen to resolve the matter, but I am not privy to what he said to Vaughan Lewis or David Montgomery, except what David told me, when they had their meeting. We had an informal meeting with the Revolutionary Military Council representative and some of his officers at a hotel in St George’s. David and I then saw the Governor-General and went back to the meeting. You had a walk with him in the garden,

59

Kenneth Kurze, Counselor for Political and Economic Affairs; then Deputy Chief of Mission, US Embassy in Bridgetown, Barbados.

60 Linda Flohr, CIA case officer. See Edgar F. Raines, ‘The Interagency Process and the Decision to Intervene in Grenada’, in Kendall Gott (ed.), US Army and the Interagency Process: Historical Perspectives (2008).

39

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

David. It was critical to whatever Tom Adams was waiting to hear when you got back on that Sunday afternoon to Barbados.

Sutton: Can you now enlighten us, David?

Montgomery: Sir Paul Scoon’s memoirs61 explains everything. I could read you the relevant extract.

Sutton: Can you summarise his essential point?

Montgomery: He was in an extremely isolated, difficult and even dangerous position. A shoot-to-kill curfew was in force on that Sunday morning. Neither he nor any of his staff had not been allowed to move from Government House. Understandably, they were really frightened. He had had little or no contact with the so-called Revolutionary Military Council. Hudson Austin appeared at one stage on the Friday or Saturday shivering like a leaf and confused and frightened about what would happen to him. He had nothing to offer in the way of what the Revolutionary Military Council were going to do. He just hoped that neither the United States nor the anyone else in the Caribbean would be unsympathetic enough to invade Grenada. We were in no way to disagree with him one way or the other; he was completely isolated. He had had no reliable information from any source for weeks. It is not easy to summarise.

Anyone who knows Sir Paul Scoon knows that he is a very careful man. He does not make statements that might subsequently be disproved. He is a bit like members of the British diplomatic service.

Kelly: Some of us!

Montgomery: Some of them! He first asked me if I was aware of any imminent military action to restore Grenada to normality. He said that he was unaware of any imminent military action to the situation in Grenada, but it could not be ruled out that the outcome of the high-level discussions currently taking place between Prime Ministers Adams and Seaga and the OECS Heads of Government on the one hand and the United States Government on the other might result in an agreement to take joint military action.’ ‘He’—Montgomery—‘went on to say that, in the context of these discussions, I was now widely acknowledged in the Eastern Caribbean and elsewhere as the sole representative of constitutional authority in Grenada.

Montgomery suggested that, in these circumstances, I should perhaps give urgent consideration to the role I would be expected to assume if a military operation were to be mounted against the RMC, adding that clearly my views on military action as an option to restore my country to normality would be crucial to any decision on that score.’

Sir Paul then went on to talk about the awesome significance of being faced with such a question and said, ‘While military intervention into one’s territory was not the sort of thing I would normally advocate, the current potentially explosive situation in Grenada was such that it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that only the presence of friendly foreign troops 61

Sir Paul Scoon, Survival for Service: My Experiences as Governor General of Grenada (2003).

40

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

could rescue Grenadians from the abyss into which they had fallen and bring back law and order into their daily lives. Therefore’—this is the punch line—‘if a military operation to achieve that were to be undertaken by our sister states, if necessary with the assistance from the United States, I would give such an initiative my fullest support.’

Sutton: Thank you very much. Ambassador Rossin, I remember an article by Gary [Williams] on the OECS’s involvement called ‘The Tail That Wagged the Dog’.62 I suppose that he was trying to get at the fact that the OECS had quite an important role in stimulating the United States into action. Will you comment on that or say what stage the United States decided to take action?

Rossin: I do not think that Frank McNeil would have told the OECS countries that a formal written invitation would be required to generate American military action if the policy of the United States Government at the moment was not to have any interest in military action. Others going there would not have said so either. You do not want to get the wrong answer to something like that. Clearly, the possibility was out there. Frank McNeil was sent down there as well as a military representative, General George Crist63 who was a senior military officer.

It was useful and may have been essential—I do not know whether it was a dispositive factor in the ultimate decision of the President or not. But having that invitation obviously from a political point of view, was extremely important.

In a way, it is the same logic that Sir Paul Scoon laid out to David, which is that it was not an American intervention. It was an intervention by Caribbean states supported by the United States. Obviously, most of them were Americans, but when I was in Grenada after the intervention the Caribbean states were not idle standers-by. The Jamaican and Barbadian troops as well as the police played out their roles. I cannot say whether or not President Reagan would have decided not to intervene had there not been such an invitation. Many factors were at work in the calculation, including the American citizens issue.

As for what Sir Paul Scoon said to David Montgomery, he specifically said to be that there should be the intervention and then, of course, the letter appeared, which I assume we shall come to later.

Sutton: Can I move on a little now towards the American intervention? What information was London receiving not from the Caribbean, but from Washington about what action the United States was taking?

Giffard: Constant denial that action was forthcoming. We were told repeatedly from Washington and London that it would not happen, both by the State Department and by Colonel North, whose reputation as a special operations officer at the time was high.

Gary Williams, ‘The Tail that Wagged the Dog: The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States’ Role in the 1983 Intervention in Grenada’, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Vol.61 (Dec.1996), pp.95-115.

63 George B. Crist, Major General, Deputy Chief of Staff for Reserve Affairs, 1980–5.

62

41

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Sutton: And you were inclined to accept that?

Giffard: Yes, I was told by a Minister afterwards that I must not believe what I was told, but I did believe it at the time.

Sutton: Was any information from the Caribbean coming through at the time about the possibilities of American action?

Giffard: Not quite in time.

Edwards: Not as I recall of American action. There were indications that the OECS member states were beginning to deploy forces or get forces organised in the expectation or hope, but nothing about American intervention came from the Caribbean, except that it might happen.

Sutton: Presumably, your assessment would be—given that there were 800 revolutionary army people on Grenada and not even that number of troops in the rest of the Caribbean apart from Jamaica—that there would certainly not be enough to sustain a landing that could be resisted.

Edwards: Yes, it was quite clear that only American forces were available in sufficient quantity and in the appropriate time scale to counter the forces that were supporting the Revolutionary Military Council in Grenada. That was certainly so. Among the exchanges of telegrams, there was a view that, if the Americans did decide to intervene—there was always that conceivable possibility—we would ask them to look after our citizens as well as their own, and that we would not be involved, but that we would not disagree or counter the operation in any way, and that we would support them, if necessary.

Sutton: Lord Bramall …

Bramall: Talk about getting down to the nitty-gritty! I want to let you into the two key meetings that happened in the Cabinet Room, one on the morning of the 24th and one later that night. The first meeting was a meeting of the Defence Committee and the Cabinet, and we were not even really discussing much about Grenada. The decision had been taken to get Antrim and the Gurkhas to Trinidad and in position, but as the meeting was finishing I said to the Prime Minister-although this was 25 years ago, I remember it as if it were yesterday; it is more or less verbatim—‘Prime Minister, I have no collateral for this at all’—you have heard how there was no collateral—‘but I feel in my water that the Americans are going to go into Grenada.’

The Prime Minister turned to me and said, ‘What on earth would make them do a

42

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

stupid thing like that?’ I said that I would tell her why I thought that they would go in. ‘They have just lost 241 men in the Lebanon.64 Their reinforcing convoy going out to replace these people is 80 miles north of Grenada. They have a situation of erratic Marxist demonstrations.

You might say that they have Cuban undertones; there are a couple of Cuban officers there, some Black Power element, something that they could believe or make themselves believe was destabilising in the West Indies and I think that President Reagan will want an easy, quick victory, which he can put against this ghastly tragedy in the Lebanon to restore morale.’

That was my feeling. I was not an expert on Barbados, but that was my absolute feeling. The Prime Minister turned to the Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe,65 and said, ‘What do you think about that?’ He said, ‘No, no. I have been in close contact with Secretary of State Schultz and he has assured me that the Americans are going to do it in slow time, and they are not going to do anything about an invasion.’ Margaret Thatcher turned to me, with her steely eyes, and said, ‘There you are’—and, with that, the meeting broke up.

This is actually as it happens. That evening, my wife and I had been out to dinner and were back in our flat. We had just fallen asleep and well after midnight—about 12.30 or perhaps 12.45—my really excellent naval assistant burst into our bedroom and said that the Prime Minister wanted to see me in Downing Street at once. I asked if there was a car, because we could not use mine as it was in the underground car park, which is locked at midnight. As the Americans would say, I pulled on my pants and sprinted with him into Hyde Park looking for a taxi. It took us quite some time, but eventually we found one. We jumped into the taxi and said, ‘No. 10, Downing Street’ and the man thought that we were a couple of drunks!

We got to Downing Street. All hell had broken loose. Everyone was there: the Permanent Secretary to the Foreign Office, the Foreign Secretary, Michael Heseltine66 and so on. Everyone was shouting. Margaret Thatcher was in a absolutely furious mood. Of course, she never made a reference to what I had said earlier. I did not expect her to; there was no reason why she should have done. But signals started to fly backwards and forwards between her and President Reagan. The first one that came from the Americans said that they were mindful of taking up the request from the Eastern Caribbean States. The second one said that they were going in at 5 o’clock in the morning. At one time, the signal went back, and my opposite number said to a friend of Reagan, ‘There is a telegram from the Prime Minister of Britain.’ He looked at it, let out an absolute expletive when he read it. She was saying that even at this late hour not to do it. It was a Commonwealth country and he had no right to invade it. That showed how strongly she felt.

I said to the Prime Minister that there was only one question that I wanted to ask her, which was whether she wanted to be seen as being associated with this operation or not because I had to get some orders out to HMS Antrim, which otherwise will be in the middle of the American invasion. ‘Certainly not’, she said. Perhaps I should have said—although it was for me to say, given that the Foreign Secretary was there—that, as they were going to do it, perhaps we ought to be showing them some support. However, I did not feel that that was for the Chief of Defence Staff and said, ‘Well, in that case, I shall now get orders on to HMS Antrim to get well clear of the area, together with the company of Gurkhas on board.

Incidentally, after the Foreign Secretary had made that remark of Schultz, he gave a statement to the House of Commons actually saying the same thing: ‘I have no knowledge of any

64

See chronology, 23 Oct. 1983.

Sir Geoffrey Howe (Lord Howe of Aberavon, 1926–2015), Foreign Secretary, 1983–9.

66 Michael Heseltine (Lord Heseltine), Defence Secretary, 1983–6.

65

43

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

invasion’.

The interesting follow-up was that the Foreign Secretary had to make a statement in the Commons the next morning. As you know, the excellent Geoffrey Howe is quite a mildmannered fellow. Had it been Michael Heseltine, he would have gone in, guns blazing.

Geoffrey Howe gave quite a bland statement and he was always on a hiding to nothing. When the question came back, ‘Did the Americans tell you about this?’, if he had said that he did know, without being too specific about when, they would have said, ‘Why the hell did you allow them to do it? It was a British Commonwealth country.’ If he had said that he did not know until about three hours before it happened—and remember we had all those cruise missiles at Greenham Common—the great question would be, whose hand would it be on the trigger? So he had not better tell these things.’ He was on a hiding to nothing.

There were some telephone conversations. I thought that Margaret Thatcher was very balanced. She talked about hoping that democracy would be restored. The interesting thing was that, at that level, it made no difference to the wonderful relationship between Margaret Thatcher and President Reagan, although they disagreed fundamentally on that point. Later on, we saw another relationship between Prime Minister Blair67 and President Bush,68 when one single objection might be taken to be a bad thing. Eventually, the American invasion was more painful than they expected; they had 19 casualties. The opposition was not very great.

They got the American students away. It helped to stabilise the West Indies, to some extent.

That is exactly as it happened and, of course, it shows up all the various things that have been said: the Americans were keen to keep it absolutely quiet until the last minute. We hoped that there would be another solution. Margaret Thatcher had no intention of intervening nor did she think that other countries should do so. She saw no parallel between the Falklands and that. They were utterly different.

When I went to America soon after, I got terrible statements not from top people, but from any ladies whom I met at parties. They said, ‘Look at you, we backed you to the hilt over the Falklands, and what did you do about us in Grenada? Absolutely nothing!’ I said that President Reagan took about a fortnight to three weeks to make up his mind whether he was supporting us in the Falklands, and Margaret Thatcher had about three or four hours!

Sutton: Thank you very much for that. Sir Bernard Ingham, can you tell us when Margaret Thatcher first became engaged with Grenada, it being a serious issue for her, and follow on from what Lord Bramall has just said?

Ingham: To put it in context, I must explain what a Press Secretary does. You are there to manage relations with the media and keep them on as even a keel as is possible in this awful world. If anybody needed a manager, it was Margaret Thatcher because she did not have the slightest interest in them. The reality of No. 10 is that you see the political correspondents lobby twice a day, the Foreign Press Association on Monday, the European Group on Tuesday, the American group on Wednesday, British provincial group on Thursday and the fishing fleet on Friday. The Sunday lobby got absolutely nothing. Everything had been written. They are desperate. When you see all those people, it is a voyage of instant discovery. As a consequence, you do not go around poking hornets’ nests where you know they exist.

Therefore, it is fair to say that Grenada blew up out of thin air, really from my point of

67 68

Tony Blair, Prime Minister, 1997–2010.

George W. Bush, US President, 2001–9.

44

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

view, to the morning after the night that the Field Marshal had spent his lively time with Margaret Thatcher being rather like the Queen in ‘Alice in Wonderland’.69 I had to brief all those people and the only question was whether it was perfectly clear that we did not know until the last minute, so that dealt with that issue.

What about the special relationship? Oh my God, that was awful. How would we stop the Soviets walking into wherever they want, and would we deploy cruise missiles? Those were the essential points that I had to deal with. Fortunately—or, unfortunately, as the case may be—we were in the habit of arranging interviews with journalists well in advance so that there could be no argument in our regime that we played it for kicks. On this occasion, the Daily Mail played it totally for kicks with the able assistance of Margaret Thatcher. She went completely ballistic in an exclusive interview with Sir David English.70 She went over the top. The two essential points were how dare he invade the Queen’s territory without telling them and, secondly, how would we stop the Soviets. I did not really have to say anything.

The Prime Minister was answering all those questions.71 The process did not take too long. It got Mrs Thatcher off the idea that President Reagan had behaved appalling by not telling her, because we said that, if she had thought that a military operation depended on secrecy, she would not have told anybody. How we would stop the Soviets took a little longer. You will see that the Americans left Grenada fairly rapidly. She then said, ‘See, they are different from the Soviets. Once they have achieved the operation, they are off.’ What rose out of it was the doctrine of the backyard. From thereon, she was ever mindful that the United States would, whether we liked it or not, have a legitimate interest in its own backyard, which was certainly the Caribbean. That begged a lot of questions about the Soviet Union and why they were in Afghanistan—but we shall leave that on one side.

The Field Marshal and I have said that we really did not interfere. We had tremendous upsets over the Falklands, Grenada, Tripoli, Reykjavik—when President Reagan decided to get rid of nuclear weapons—and …

Pellew: SDI.72 Ingham: You are quite right. And, of course, President Reagan’s runaway budget deficit because of defence spending, which Margaret Thatcher thought was all together out of this world.

Reagan was always immensely courteous. He is reputed to have said when she got really brisk in one telephone call, ‘Gee, honey, don’t take on so!’. On the 26th, she recorded that he rang, and she admits that she was not in her sunniest disposition. President Reagan is reputed to have started his telephone call by saying, ‘Well, I thought I might throw my hat through the door first!’ They got over it and I suppose that we all got over it. The lasting effects of Grenada was that we have to recognise that the great powers have a legitimate interest in their own backyard.

The Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) was ill-tempered and her most famous line is ‘Off with their heads!’.

70 Sir David English (1931–98), editor of the Daily Mail, 1971–92.

71 See http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105212 72 The Strategic Defence Initiative. See Also see M.D. Kandiah and G. Staerck, The British Response to SDI, Witness Seminar, 9 July 2003 (2005).

69

45

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Sutton: I might come back to that before the end. Before I call Ambassador Rossin, I would like to go back to something that you suggested, Mark, earlier when you said that you some inkling that America was planning military action on 19 or 20 October.

Pellew: Yes, that was on the preceding Friday, the 21st—it was merely an advanced consultation with the Congressional leadership. There was great sensitivity at the time between the President and the Congress about the whole situation, which was being argued in respect of the Americans in the Lebanon. They were being ultra-cautious in making sure that Speaker Tip O’Neill was told enough in advance, but then they had the great worry about breaching security. It was extremely difficult. They told the Congressional leadership considerably in advance. We did, to that extent, have some inkling, but only informally. The State Department, I am sure, was exactly as reported in the list that we have before us and was saying that it knows of no plans.

Sutton: How does that square with something when I was writing the book and talking to people to the effect that, with the invading forces, a UK officer of fairly senior rank was sent to Grenada without markings to observe what was going on? I do not know how true that was, but people said it to me. I would not have thought that an officer would have done that without higher authority, whatever his rank. Was that true?

Bramall: Someone else might know. I ought to have known if one was sent officially. I would be taking a bit of a chance in view of what Margaret Thatcher had just said to me. I certainly did not know of one being sent. Whether one from Antrim had somehow got himself there, I do not know. Does anybody know?

Edwards: No. Bernard said something about what we knew about the intentions in Washington. I have a summary note of the telegram that arrived in Washington about 5 o’clock on the Sunday.

The phrases included, ‘National Security Council proceeding cautiously. The fleet that had reached area 23 was being kept east of Dominica’. That gave the US the option to intervene, although no decision had been taken, but they had been receiving requests from the OECS. Bramall: Did they say that they were mindful?

Edwards: The telegram says that the students were okay, but they were considering very carefully and that Cuba was acutely nervous. They gave a categorical assurance that they would evacuate British citizens and that there would be consultation with us before future steps. On the basis of that telegram, the meeting with the Secretary of State took place on the following morning at 9 o’clock. We were advising about what the statement should be in the House of Commons when the phrase ‘I know of no such intention’ was used. Some of us there, not only Lord Bramall, thought that they might do it, but we thought that they would consult us before further steps were taken.

46

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Bramall: About the officer, it is possible. The task force did not leave America intending to go to Grenada. It left America to go to the Lebanon, to reinforce what they had lost and perhaps to do other actions, which they did not yet know about. There could well have been some British liaison officer on the force that was going to the Mediterranean when the thing got diverted.

Sutton: I want to explore why the Americans felt it necessary to keep us out of the loop.

Montgomery: I do not think that it is surprising that the United States decided to keep their intentions secret from No. 10. When one thinks of the interminable leaks of information that come out of there, they were very wise.

Ingham: Not then! It is an absolute libel on No. 10 pre-1997 to say that leaks were always coming out of there. They were not!

Montgomery: They must have come from somewhere.

Ingham: Probably the Foreign Office.

Montgomery: That useful whipping boy of all Prime Ministers.

As for whether anyone knew, any casual observer from the moment that Maurice Bishop was executed on the 19th, Barbados airport became the scene of a second D-day.

United States forces were pouring in by the minute. There were thousands of combat troops, support troops and other personnel. It was clear that the Americans were preparing for an armed intervention, provided that they could get the necessary written specific invitation from people such as the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States or the useless CARICOM—although that was never an option.

Robertson: They got a backdated invitation from Paul Scoon, after the invasion.

Bramall: If there were such things, matters had certainly not reached the Prime Minister. When I put the idea into her head, she might have said that she had been wondering about it, too. But she did not. Her first reaction was, ‘What on earth would make them do a stupid thing like that?’

Her mind was completely set against the idea. Nothing ever reached anywhere near the Prime Minister.

Sutton: Can you explain why the Americans decided to keep us out of the loop?

47

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Rossin: As for the timing of the decision, making plans to carry out an intervention and preparing for the mobilisation of troops is different from deciding to carry out such plans. If you decide to, you do it on the spot, but if you have the option, you want to make sure that you ready. I was in Barbados with Ambassador McNeil and, at a certain point, I was told that I was going to Grenada with the Special Forces. My sense is that the final decision was taken to do it about two hours after the OECS meeting with Frank McNeil. I think that David’s analysis is essentially correct. That said, there was a strong inclination to do it. It is not that they did not think of it until the OECS. They might have done it anyway. The timing to do it was finalised by the OECS. I do not think that the Lebanon thing had much of a roll anyway because it did not change anything in the process. I was on the Guam during the first day of the military operations with Admiral Metcalfe and I did not see a British military officer, which is where he would have been.

I do not know why Ronald Reagan decided not to inform Margaret Thatcher, but I throw out a theory: she thought that it was stupid. Denis Healey73 said in Parliament that it would only make the position worse to have a military intervention. At the time, George Foulkes74 said, ‘Is he aware that progress towards democracy such as what my right hon. and honourable Friends have spoken of will not be achieved by any form of external military intervention?’ There was the great assumption on this side of the water that it was selfevidently a stupid thing and something that would be damaging. Hindsight has 20:20 vision.

We see what happened only after, and after clearly proved that it was neither stupid nor a blow to democracy—given that democracy was restored fairly quickly.

Under those circumstances, did the operational security considerations that the Chief of Defence Staff and others have mentioned play into this? There was not a sympathetic audience on this side of the water, so given that troops were to be put in harm’s way as would the students and Grenadian people, and that the point of minimalising casualties generally argues for telling as few people as possible, there was no operational necessity to tell. The theory that it was a Commonwealth country so the United States had no right to take such action was dismissed by Paul Scoon himself immediately after the intervention. He said, ‘She is the Prime Minister of Britain. This is Grenada’. There may be some reasoning why the transparency that we would expect between London and Washington did not pertain in this case. I am speculating, but the generalised assumption that it was stupid and bound to be a failure was remarkable. There was no such thought on our side of the water Ingham: I want to support our American friend. It seems that when you read this record, the Americans could say quite reasonably that they consulted us. Indeed, I think that they went a long way to consult us—and they got the answer. Perhaps they got the answer that they were expecting, but they got it. No. We cannot argue on the basis of all that I have read in the document that they did not consult us. They did. They did not get the answer that they liked, and then they took their own decision. We may not have expected them to take the decision.

Edwards: I was at the meeting in No. 10. We had the letter about being minded to take action. There was then a telephone call to the Prime Minister. She was very reluctant to say too much on the telephone. She was very conscious of the security situation and doing any damage to the

73 74

Denis Healey (Lord Healey, 1917–2015), Shadow Foreign Secretary, 1980–7.

George Foulkes (Lord Foulkes of Cumnock), Labour MP, 1979–2005.

48

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

operation. Robin Butler75 told her that it was a secure line. She said, ‘No. I remember the Falklands. I shall not say anything that might damage in any way the operation of going in at 5 o’clock the following morning.’ We were actually told in a sense what was happening. She was very careful and understood very much the operational need for secrecy.

Heseltine and the Minister for the Armed Forces, John Stanley,76 were present as well and the thing that was uppermost in their mind when they knew it was going to happen and when the Secretary of State said that he had no knowledge of such an intention was the matter of the cruise missiles. That was raised several times at the meeting. There had been a lot of discussion in the press about whose finger was on the trigger and were we going to be consulted? In political terms, that was almost the most worrying aspect of the whole thing. I think that Bernard Ingham will confirm that.

Ingham: And the legality of it.

Sutton: Mr Montgomery, I want to explore two more questions.

Montgomery: No. 10 simply failed to understand the strength of feeling of the people who actually matter— the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States—whose future security was possibly at risk. If they had, we would not have had any silly exchanges between the Prime Minister and President Reagan. Until the very last minute on the Monday, the United States in the form of the White House was very wary about agreeing to the armed intervention. That morning, they were faced with the piece of paper which Sir Paul Scoon referred to in his memoirs. Faced with the information, yes in principle because of the situation and because he know the people who were advocating it—Tom Adams, Seaga, Miss Charles and Compton—he was prepared to give tacit approval to an armed intervention with the promise of what was practicable, as he states in his book, for a written request On the Monday morning, Tom Adams was still struggling to persuade the United States officials in Barbados to go.

However, Barbados Airport looked like the preparation for D-day, but that was only a precaution in my view. Larry Rossin can perhaps say something.

Rossin: I do not think that I can add anything.

Pellew: The impact of the bombing of the marine barracks in Lebanon was enormous. It was ghastly.

It would have been unthinkable after that for President Reagan to show weakness to foreign policy in his own backyard, which was relatively simple and something that should have been quick and easy. It was unthinkable that they would not interfere with the thing that was already set well in train. I do not remember being involved in writing the telegram that John Edwards quoted from, and which must have been sent on the Sunday, but I am sure that it would have referred to Beirut.

75

Sir Robin Butler (Lord Butler of Brockwell), Principal Private Secretary to Margaret the Prime Minister, 1982–5.

76 Sir John Stanley, Minister of State for the Armed Forces, 1983–7.

49

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Sutton: I have two questions: one involving Grenada and one involving the United States. My impression is that it did not really do too much to disturb what is sometimes referred to as a ‘special relationship’. Is that right, Sir Sydney?

Giffard: Yes. My impression at the time was that the Beirut thing was crucial in the timing of the American decision. No, I do not think that it affected matters longer term.

Sutton: So, within days, we were back to the normal relationship.

Ingham: Bearing in mind the catalogue of arguments, it strengthened the relationship in a sense. They could actually have a row and come out of it with mutual respect. We make far too much of such noises.

Sutton: What was the response of the people of Grenada when the Americans came in, and you were sitting watching it all happen?

Kelly: I did not dare call it an invasion any longer. It was a rescue mission, as they saw it. They saw President Reagan as the saviour. Most Grenadians were not concerned. They were glad that it happened when it happened. They said that, if Britain had been involved, it would have taken another few days and those days could have been critical. I do not think that we came out of it badly. We did not come out of it in the Commonwealth badly. Mrs Thatcher was able to go there with her head high about the Grenadian issue. We had not muddied waters. The Grenadians welcomed it. They spent the next year or so persuading Americans not to apologise for what had happened. When my friends in Grenada visited the States, they were often apologised to for what America had done to them. They said, ‘Don’t dare apologise’.

About 95 per cent of the people welcomed it.

Thorndike: I agree. A great majority of Grenadians went along with it. However, they were very sceptical of the idea that Cubans were hiding in the hills. Helicopters were flying around saying in English and Spanish, ‘Okay, Cubanos, we know you are there. Come on out.’ Posters were put up in the town offering so many dollars for an AK47, pistols and so on. They were very sceptical about the ex post facto claims still going on that the airport was planned primarily to be a Soviet air base in the Caribbean.

In the December 1984 elections, the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement, which billed itself as the successor to the New Jewel Movement only received 5 per cent of the vote, and it was a completely free and open election. What was remarkable was how quickly the revolutionary rhetoric that had washed over people and which the party believed had been taken on board by the people disappeared. On the first anniversary of the revolution following the intervention-rescue mission—on 13 March 1984, a national holiday—no one said anything. It was as if there were a collective decision to wipe it off the historic map. It was quite extraordinary.

50

Caribbean Witness Seminars

King’s College London

Kelly: It has now been agreed to call the new airport the Maurice Bishop International Airport! That was agreed in April.

Sutton: Everyone can add one line and then we must finish.

Edwards: In terms of Anglo-American relations in respect of the Caribbean, one positive consequence of what happened in Grenada we then put into a more formal way our exchange of views with the Americans. A meeting was organised at Chevening,77 and a subsequent meeting in Washington. There was a real attempt for us to get alongside the Americans and talk about the Caribbean thoughtfully and its longer-term future.

Gay: On a Trinidad and Tobago website in January 2008, there was a long statement from Maurice Bishop’s daughter, Nadia Bishop, giving everyone involved—including Bernard Coard, who she visited while he was in jail. It is very long. It is very religious, but well worth reading.78 Rossin: She is Maurice Bishop’s surviving daughter. With regard to the weapons, naturally the place was awash with weapons. At one point there was a scandal because every American going there was bringing back as a souvenir an AK47 or something. A Congressman actually tried to smuggle one back into the United States. A significant stockpile of weapons and uniforms were also found there. We never did understand what they were for, and we probably never really will understand the ultimate relationship between Grenada, Cuba, the Soviet Union and Nicaragua.

Sutton: I thank all the participants for their contribution. Everyone who has contributed will be receiving a statement of the proceedings to check, which we want them to return. Thank you very much for enlightening us about such events.

77

Formerly the country seat of the Earls Stanhope, since the late-1970s Chevening has been used the country residence of the UK Foreign Secretary.

78 http://www.belgrafix.com/gtoday/2008news/Jan/Jan12/Nadia-Bishop-speaks-of-forgiveness-andreconciliation.htm [Accessed 3 Feb. 2020].

51

gov.uk/fco