Andrew Sage

and violence.

Now, with 1974, independence was won, but sadly, under Gary and his notorious secret police, which were, by the way, called the Mongoose Gang.

Now, there was already suspicions of potential election fraud, and it wasn't helped by the fact that his mongoose gang was known to intimidate people.

But in 1976, despite this fraud political landscape, Bishop won a leadership role as opposition and became known across the country, in a country as small as Grenada, as someone charismatic, personable, relatable.

the New Jewel movement started to build a reputation for being connected to the people, engage with students, engage with pro bono work in some cases, as I mentioned, some of them were lawyers.

And they were youthful.

They were bringing a youthful energy to the sort of old guard, colonial era politics of Eric Gehry and his ilk.

So the story of how the New Jewel Movement came into power is actually a bit humorous to me.

On the 13th of March, 1979, Gary went to the UN meeting in New York that was happening at the time.

And as the saying goes, when the cat's away, the mice will play.

In this case, while the cat was away, the New Jewel Movement pulled off a coup.

A completely bloodless coup.

They took control of the army barracks and the radio.

When they went on the radio, and this is the funny part to me, they told people to go to police stations and demand that they put up white flags of surrender.

And the population was so anti-Gary that they did it.

They just walked up into the police stations and were like, yeah, put up these white flags.

And the police said, yeah, sure.

That was that.

That's how the New Jewel movement came into power.

Yeah.