Eric Gairy

Sir Eric Matthew Gairy (born February 18, 1922 in St. Andrew's Parish , † August 23, 1997 in Grand Anse , Grenada ) was a Grenadian politician .

Gairy was born in a town near Grenville in Grenada. He initially worked as a farmer and later as a primary school teacher. In 1950 he founded the Grenada Manual and Mental Workers Union , a union that represented the interests of the plantation workers vis-à-vis the planter aristocracy of Grenada and later the Grenada United Labor Party .

Gairy was Chief Minister from 1954 to 1960 and from 1961 to 1962 . However, he had to resign in 1962 because of corruption . In 1967 Gairy became Grenada's first Prime Minister . During his tenure, his country gained independence from Great Britain in 1974 .

Gairy was ennobled by the Queen in 1977 as a Knight Bachelor and, in addition to Great Britain, he had close ties to the USA. Gairy's leadership style became increasingly paranoid and characterized by massive violations of human rights . Assaults on trade unionists and the media, the privileging of his supporters and the suppression of political opponents, among others by a group called " Mongoose Gang ", were the order of the day. Gairy had the military and police trained by units from the Chilean military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet .

On March 13, 1979, he was ousted by opposition leader Maurice Bishop of the New Jewel Movement in an almost non-violent revolution when he was giving a speech on UFOs at the UN in New York .

Gairy remained in exile in the United States until 1983 . When the US intervened in Grenada in 1983 , Gairy returned and ran for the 1984 presidential election. But despite his promises to have changed, his party lost. Further attempts by Gairy and his party to regain political power (1990 and 1995) were equally unsuccessful.

Gairy died in Grand Anse in 1997.

See also

• History of Grenada

literature

• Sir Eric Gairy , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 39/1998 from September 14, 1998, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Hugh O'Shaughnessy: Obituary: Sir Eric Gairy. In: The Independent . August 25, 1997, accessed October 19, 2018 . 
2. ^ Siegfried Buschschlueter: Operation "Urgent Fury" - 25 years ago: The Grenada invasion. In: Deutschlandfunk broadcast “Background”. October 24, 2008, accessed October 19, 2018 . 
3. ↑ John Simkin: Eric Gairy. In: Spartacus Educational. August 2014, accessed on October 19, 2018 . 
4. ^ Thomas M. Leonard: Encyclopedia of the Developing World. Psychology Press, 2005, p. 180.
   Eric VB Britter: Grenada. In: Encyclopedia Britannica . October 9, 2018, accessed October 19, 2018 .