_ After the Second of the
Communist Party of Cuba, Prime Min-
ister Maurice Bishop of Grenada spoke
to journalists at a Christmas day press
conference which included the Tribune’s
Havana co} Paul Coast. Gre-
nada, the southernmost of the windward
islands with a population of 110,000,
successfully carried out its revolution on
March 13, 1979 with the overthrow of
the corrupt Gairy regime. Prime Min-
ister Bishop describes the achievements
and problems of the past two years and
the tasks ahead.

* “7 *
Why did the New Jewel Movement
join the Socialist International?

BISHOP: We want to broaden and
diversify our relations with different
social forces, political organizations
and progressive peoples around the
world. The Socialist International rep-
resents .. . some of our own aspirations
and objectives and goals. Within the

' organization we’ll try to focus on the

issues of major concern to us: anti-
imperialist, anti-colonialist, anti-neo-
colonialist, anti-racist issues.

_ We believe in that way membership
in a body like the Socialist International
can effectively complement our work in
the Non-Aligned Movement and can
also effectively complement our inter-
nal affairs.

You said during the Congress that
there are signs of ‘‘dangerous imperialist
adventures”’ against Grenada. How will
your country defend itself against enemy
aggression?

BISHOP: Our feeling is that the Rev-
olution can only be built, and therefore
defended, if we observe some very
basic principles. As we see it, it’s
necessary for us to rapidly engage in
increasing production — in that way,
building a sound national economy,
breaking our dependence on im-
perialism, and also in that way being
able to provide social and economic
benefits for our people.

The second thing, we feel, is that it’s
Necessary for us — always — to
mobilize and organize our people for
democratic participation in the affairs
of the country. We feel that that will
also have the effect of promoting unity
at a deeper level. And the third thing, as
we see it, is the need to build a strong
defence capacity so that the people of

| the country will be in a position to de-

fend their own Revolution if and when
they’re faced with any external attack.

In terms of the military preparation,
what we have been doing is building.
Using our present permanent, standing

army, largely as a mobilizing tool, we .

have been building a war-time army
based on the people. In other words, we
have been trying to recruit, as rapidly as
possible, and to train in the use of all the
weapons we now have, those people in
our country belonging to the militia. So
that in a situation of extemal attack we
will not have to rely only on the
People’s Revolutionary Army — the
permanent army — but we will have in
fact a war-time army based on the
people. :

This work has been going very well.
Thousands of Grenadians have been
recruited, are learning how to use the
weapons, and are falling into the dif-
ferent formations of the army, from
squad level right up to battalion level.
We fiow have a capacity to mobilize
these forces in a very short period of
time.

TRIBUNE PHOTO — KERRY McCUAIG

4 entirely different role to play in the

Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop (left) with economic minister Unison Whit-

GRENADA FIGHTING

man ... the revolution is only two years old but the hardest part is yet to come.

How do things look on the education
and production fronts in Grenada?

BISHOP: To be very frank about it,
we’ve been able to achieve a lot more
success in the area of education than in
the strictly productive area. Nonethe-
less, I think it is true to say that we have
reasonably fulfilled the national slogan
of ‘‘Education and Production’’ which
we proclaimed at the beginning of 1980.

In the area of education, as you
know, we have started an adult literacy
campaign conducted through. the
Centre for Popular Education. Gre-
nada, however, does not have a major
illiteracy problem as such. The largest
estimate we have now for illiteracy is
about 7% of the population.

Certainly the scale of our problem is
nothing compared with what Cuba
faced, what our Nicaraguan comrades
have been facing, or even more dramat-
ically — what the Ethiopian people
faced when they inherited something
like 95% illiteracy. Nonetheless, our
view is that every single illiterate must
be made literate. j

We have opened, for example, a
fishing school, a tourism school, in-ser-
vice police and public servants training

Bishop’s message
to Trib readers —

To our own nationals, to Carib-
bean nationals, indeed to all demo-
cratic, progressive and socialist
forces in Canada; We very greatly
value the work you have done in
| supporting the Revolution over the
past 22 months.

We feel you're strategically lo-
cated for helping to further expose
the contradictions between Cana-
dian foreign policy and U.S. foreign
policy and in helping the Govern-
ment of Canada to see that it has an

Caribbean than the role chosen by
the military-industrial complex and
successive governments of the
United States. You also have a
major role to play in combating ad-
verse propaganda against the Rev-
olution.

We hope all of you comrades, ip-
cluding our own nationals, will find
the time to. come to Grenada to see

“for yourselves what has been
happening these past 22 months.

* schools, and a militia school. We have

also greatly expanded the agricultural

_ training school. We have started, as of

October, a teachers’ in-service pro-
gram which is aimed at training 80% of
the unqualified teachers in our country
over the next three years. The previous
training programs trained only 50
teachers every two years and in fact,
usually by the end of those two years,
about half of them would migrate.

We have doubled the number of
places for children attending secondary
schools, particularly through the open-
ing of a new secondary school last Sep-
tember. It should be pointed out that
that is only the second government se-
condary school to have been opened
after 300 years. The British colonialists
left one secondary school. The other
eleven were all built by the churches.

We have also been able to do quite a

— lot in the area of higher education. At

this point, more than 220 Grenadians
are studying in universities abroad. In
the last year before the Revolution only
three Grenadians went abroad on
university scholarships.

In the area of the economy, we have

been able to increase agricultural
production. We have begun to diversify

“and expand agriculture. We have

opened a number of factories based on
agriculture — a coffee processing plant
for example, and an agro-industrial
plant which produces jam, jellies and
fruit products. It’s a multi-processing
plant.

The work that has been done in
fishing is also important, both in terms
of increasing the overall quantity of our
catch and teaching new skills to our
fishermen.

In tourism, for the first time, a state
sector has appeared. The state now
owns and runs three hotels and has a
majority shareholding in a fourth. And,
of course, we have plans for expanding
that program.

Unemployment is down from 50%
before the Revolution to about 35%
after the first year.

A national planning mechanism is
being created. Not only did we inherit a
completely demoralized bureaucracy,
but we also inherited a bureaucracy that
was not geared for planning of any kind.
At the time of the Revolution there was
only one economist in the whole

_ government.
Overall, we are not satisfied with our

success in the productive areas. In 1981
that is going to be much more of a task
for us than the social areas.

BACK

How about some personal reflections
on what you’ve gone through and what
the country’s gone through over the past
two years? What can we expect to see in
Grenada over the next two or three
years?

BISHOP: It's often been said that
taking power is much easier than main-
taining power and building an econ-
omy. My personal experiences over the
past two years have proven this to be
more than correct. The work has in-
creased ten-fold. The ideological and
theoretical work has to continue. in-
cluding at this stage. the very top
leadership having to personally be
guides in study. The propaganda work
has to continue. The organizational
work has to continue. On top of that,
the Party now has a role to play in help-
ing to build the economy and the state
apparatus.

As for the next two or three years, we
expect the pressures to increase, cer-
tainly in the context of the existing reg-
ional and international situations. It is
clear the Revolution is facing its gravest
dangers.

The period of the next three to four
months, in particular, is going to be a
very critical period. There have been
calls by the most reactionary spokes-
men in the region to have us expelled
from CARICOM:# the Caribbean Com-
munity organization. And, of course,
we are integrally linked to the whole
CARICOM movement. Therefore,
these calls are being very closely moni-
tored by us and we have been doing
everything necessary to ensure that the
plans of the imperialists and their
spokesmen in the region are not
successful.

At the same time, I am sure that over
the next two years we ate going to see
the economy more and more stabilized,
more and more consolidated, more and
more diversified and expanded.

We are also confident that the unity
.of our people will also increase. That
the political consciousness of our mas-
ses will be deepened. That the class
consciousness our workers will also go

. forward and that the. vanguard role of
the Party will also develop. —

Is it true there are more Grenadians
living outside the country than inside the
country? How is the government coping
with this phenomenon?

BISHOP: In fact, about five times
the population of Grenada lives out-
side Grenada. We have been seeking
to develop the closest organizationa!
contacts with our Grenadian nationals
abroad. For those with particularly
important skills, required by the Rev-
olution, we have been encouraging
them to return home. And many of
them have come back and have been
working in a very patriotic way for the
very small salaries we can afford to
pay them.

Secondly, we have been encourag-
ing all Grenadian nationals abroad to
invest in government airport bonds, in
treasury bonds, and also to put some of
their money in the National Com-
mercial Bank of Grenada — the bank
created by the Revolution.

We have also been looking for moral
and material support in other forms.

Apart from Party organizations ab-
road they have also been joining
organizations such as the Canada-
Grenada and the United States-Gre-
nada Friendship Associations.
Through those organizations they
have been doing a good job of promot-
ing the goals and objectives of the
Revolution.

=!

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JAN. 30, 1981—Page 7