Famous Grenadians

Back to Famous Grenadians

Message Board

E-mail Us

Guestbook

Homepage

Courtesy of http://www.timesonline.co.uk

Left-winger who became a minister in Grenada's revolutionary Government, and avoided execution at the hands of 'the Pol Pot group' Being put in a foetid cell by Marxist extremists turned out to be a blessing for the Grenadian activist George Louison. It saved him, at least, from being murdered along with the Prime Minister and most of his close associates in 1983. Louison had been part of the revolutionary group that seized power in 1979, and had held office in the divided Government that followed, but in late 1983 an internecine struggle for control broke out. The left- wing extremists led by Bernard Coard - whom Louison's friend Fidel Castro dubbed "the Pol Pot group" - turned on their comrades, lined them up, and had them shot to pieces with automatic weapons. Although the US had been watching the increase of Soviet influence in Grenada without acting, this was too much, and it now intervened to restore parliamentary government. George Louison was typical of the young Grenadians of the late 1960s who saw their island - nominally still a British possession but virtually self-governing - in the hands of a corrupt, womanising and eccentric Prime Minister, Eric (later Sir Eric) Gairy. With an ineffectual parliamentary opposition, they turned to the flavours of the age, "black power", as preached in America, and socialism. Most of these advocates of black power were from the urban bourgeoisie - the many peasant smallholdings throughout the neighbouring Windward Islands were to provide a bulwark for parliamentary institutions in the defeat of communist penetration there - but Louison was from rural farming stock. From the village of Concord, he went to the Grenada Teachers' College, qualifying in 1974, then teaching in St George's, the capital. He had early links with Christian development agencies, and was attracted to organisations that sprang up in response to the bubbling desire for change. This emotion was mobilised by Maurice Bishop, a lawyer who returned from London in 1970, aged 26, and another young lawyer, Kendrick Radix. Together they started Jewel (Joint Endeavour for Welfare Education and Liberation), which was to merge with another small group in 1973 to form the New Jewel Movement. At this point, Gairy rushed for independence, ahead of all the other small British Caribbean Associated States. As the New Jewel Movement began to build up the pressure, Gairy's police and his personal heavies, the Mongoose Gang, cruelly beat up its leadership (but not Louison, who was still at college). Further violence followed, including the killing of Bishop's father. At the first post-independence election, in 1976, a People's Alliance was formed to challenge Gairy, with the New Jewel Movement participating. It won six seats to Gairy's nine, with Bishop and Goard among those returned. Within the opposition, the New Jewel Movement had a majority. But now another factor entered the equation. In that year, the Barbadian Government became aware that Cuban intelligence officers were being sent to Barbados and fanning out across the eastern Caribbean. Its sources indicated that radical groups were being funded, otten directly or via Guyana. But with Jimmy Carter as its new President, the US seemed unwilling to send any warning signals about this. To Cuba and the Eastern bloc, it seemed that the White House was less committed to the idea of the Caribbean as an American lake. For three years the eastern Caribbean was in ferment and parliamentary democracy seemed to be at risk. Then came the bombshell of a coup d'etat in Grenada. Louison and his brother Einstein were among those who participated in the overthrow of the Gairy Government by armed force on March 12, 1979, after which an avowedly revolutionary regime took over. Under Bishop's leadership, "People's Laws" took the place of Parliament, with the People's Revolutionary Government ruling by decree. Being close to Bishop, Louison was sent to talk to "Tom" Adams, the Prime Minister of Barbados, who extracted a promise that Grenada would soon hold elections. It did not. An attractive, modest and unaffected man, Louison became a member of the Central Committee of the party, and of the Political Bureau (communist nomenclature was the order of the day). He also served as Minister of Education, Youth and Social Affairs, and then Minister of Agro-industries and Fisheries. This was a tough portfolio, and he came in for severe criticism in the Central Committee. Grenada became more and more dependent upon aid from Cuba and the Soviet bloc. An international airport was constructed by a largely Cuban workforce, which was ideal for refuelling flights from Cuba to conflicts in Africa. Meanwhile arms poured in from Moscow for the People's Revolutionary Army. Like Bishop, Louison was steeped in admiration for Fidel Castro, whom both of them considered a friend. Castro, after all, had a winning personality, and was himself Caribbean-born, so he saw things in a local perspective. Like Castro, Bishop and Louison were committed revolutionaries, but unlike Coard they were not hardline neo-Stalinists, and the two factions were destined to clash. The crunch came in September 1983 when the Coard group in the Central Committee proposed formalisation of "joint leadership", meaning Bishop to be the popular public face, without real power. Louison was the only one with the guts to vote against this (Bishop and two supporters abstained). Bishop was put under house arrest on October 13. Louison resigned from the Central Committee, and his dismissal from it and the Politbureau was announced. He was taken to Richmond Hill Prison, which looms above St George's, and confined in a pen previously used for goats. His brother, who was the Commander-in-Chief of the People's Revolutionary Army, was put under house arrest. Louison was taken to Bishop by his captors from time to time for talks, but he was in prison at the moment when a great popular movement poured up to Bishop's house to free him on October 19. Then, at the head of the crowd, Bishop went to the old fort at the harbour mouth. When troops arrived, under the direction of the Coard faction, they mowed down him and his supporters. From gaps in the wall of the goat pen, Louison looked down and saw the puffs of smoke. The news came, and others were thrown in the cell where they were told that they too would be shot. If this had been an order, however, it was countermanded. Louison was freed by US Marines on October 27, following the armed intervention by American and Caribbean forces which overthrew the revolutionary regime. After the restoration of parliamentary institutions, Louison with Radix (who had also been in the goat pen) formed a political party, the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement, but this won no seats in the elections of December 1984. Instead a broad coalition, the New National Party, took power, headed by the veteran former Prime Minister, Herbert Blaize. Louison tried once more, but then gave up politics, spending some time in Radix's chambers before studying law in Britain. Though he was admitted to the Grenada Bar, he went to practise in Trinidad, where he died. He is survived by his partner and two sons. George Louison, political activist and lawyer, was born on November 29,1951. He died of a heart attack on May 13, 2003, aged 51.

Go to Top of Page

To Print this page please click on the print icon --->

Back to Famous Grenadians

Message Board

E-mail Us

Guestbook

Homepage