On Monday 27th of May, an event was due to take place at the Bourne Lecture Hall in St. Georges University campus. It describes itself as a “celebration” of the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the revolution, from 1979 to 2019. But also it describes itself as a critique.
(Don’t know what happened to that perfectly good word “criticism” but we do like to copy the Americans and their PC. Perhaps “criticism” sounded too harsh and critique more polite.)
This is something of a new departure as previously similar events have provided no room for opposing views, just as in the revolution itself. It remains to be seen how much “critique” will be heard.
Two of the key speakers at this event are Dr. Merle Collins and Dr. Didacus Jules. Although they look like perfectly charming and pleasant individuals, they were both deeply involved in the revolution and were willing to work for a non-democratic government which held no general elections and which threw people into jail without trial. What is more to the point they are people who would like to bring the revolution back.
According to the website of this event, “The conference is intended to create an intellectual space for the younger generation to better understand and appreciate the significance of the Grenada Revolution to Grenadian and Caribbean political history.”
I’ll translate that piece of communist double-speak: “The conference is intended to lure the youth to a space where they can be indoctrinated.”
Always a totalitarian regime goes for the youth so that the next generation will offer no opposition. The Hitler Youth was an extremely important part of the Nazi regime, as was the Youth Arm of the New Jewel Movement, NJM.
Let us hope that at this event, there will be people willing to stand up and speak about the fear and terror of those times, the political prisoners, the torture. Why did they kill the Prime Minister and those loyal to him?
This is not something to celebrate; this is hell! And Drs. Collins and Jules are connectors to that hell.
Under the guise of academic research, the organisers are working towards returning us to those terrible days when we were not free to speak our minds. I wonder how the members of the board of SGU feel about this?
The revolution was a very dark tunnel that we were exceedingly lucky to come out of. Next time we may not be so lucky.