Activists to join Cuban ambassador in East London to commemorate 40th anniversary of US-backed Grenada coup

ACTIVISTS are set to join the Cuban ambassador to Britain in east London later on Saturday for a meeting to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the US-backed coup against the Grenadian Revolution.

Cuban ambassador Barbara Montalvo is scheduled to speak alongside local activist Jonathan Silberman, and Matthew Lord, who was part of the People’s Militia during the revolution, at the Osmani Centre, Underwood Road in east London from 3pm.

Maurice Bishop led the New Jewel Movement into an explicitly anti-oligarchic and anti-imperialist revolution in 1979, becoming prime minister.

The revolution forged close alliances with Guatamala’s socialist neighbours in Cuba, which hastened the undermining of the New Jewel Movement by the US.

In October 1983 the US financed and promoted a coup against the revolution through the head of the army, General Hudson Austin, with the support of then-deputy prime minister Bernard Coard.

Mr Bishop was murdered on October 19 1983, along with 15 of his comrades, before the US invaded on October 25 to consolidate the coup.

Olaf Andra Proppe, who will chair the meeting, said: “In capitalism’s world disorder, marked by the march to war and assaults on working people, the lessons of the Grenada Revolution and its overthrow are decisive to forging the independent working class movement we need today.”