A Journey with Bernard Coard

What the last 50 years have taught us since the publication of How the West Indian Child is made educationally sub-normal in the British School System  
The video recording of the conversation between Bernard Coard and Dave Neita is now available

 

On 4 November 2021, Bernard Coard was in conversation with Dave Neita, a lawyer, published poet, lecturer and international public speaker.  This was a follow-up session to the launch of the 50th-anniversary edition of How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System.

That groundbreaking study, first published in 1971, provided an understanding to Caribbean and working-class parents of the obstacles they faced in the limited educational opportunities open to their children.… Read on ...

Statement on the Maurice Bishop International Airport

Statement

“He should haul his ar?*.  He mus’ think we all chuppidy”, was the retort from a Grenadian in the UK to the news that Naguib Sawiris, the largest hotel property owner in Grenada, is lobbying the Keith Mitchell government to privatise its lone international airport, the Maurice Bishop International Airport, to him.  Such was the furore at this statement made in late April that all sides of Grenadian society, both at home and abroad, expressed their opposition to this prospect.

Grenada – Forward Ever has supplied a background to this incident and a statement deploring such a move.


Background

On the 21 April this year Mr Naguib Sawiri, a billionaire with commercial interests in Grenada, delivered a presentation to a panel of Grenadian business executives and others at the ground-breaking of his second hotel development.  … Read on ...

African Liberation Day – Grenada 2021

Under the theme “Forward Ever to World-Wide Pan-African Unity!”


Grenada celebrated African Liberation Day (ALD) for the first time since the US invasion in 1983.   This joyous occasion was held on Tuesday, 25 May.

African Liberation Day is celebrated annually on May 25th and commemorates the founding of the Organization of African Unity, now African Union, on this day in 1963.  It is a public holiday in many countries but not Grenada. Holiday or not, ALD is a worldwide observation on May 25 and was marked in Grenada.  Progressive people throughout the world celebrate ALD as a means of assessing progress towards global African liberation, of continental Africans as well as those in its vast diaspora of North & Latin America, the UK, the Caribbean and elsewhere.… Read on ...

March 13 – Celebrating the 42nd anniversary of the Grenada Revolution

March 13, 1979

Grenadians rose up and grabbed their freedom


Celebrating the 42nd anniversary of the Grenada Revolution

Forty-two years ago, on March 13, 1979, the people of Grenada rose up from under the brutal Gairy dictatorship and seized power.  In the four and a half short years of the Revo’ Grenadians brought about maternity rights laws, free education, free health care, economic reform, an increase in democratic control, a huge increase in free university education, infrastructure development including the building of an international airport, expanded social housing, a significant increase in employment, a teacher education programme, a huge literacy programme and much more.… Read on ...

Launch of “How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-normal…”

The 50th-anniversary Internet launch of How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-normal …, was held on the 31 March 2021, with a panel comprising with Bernard Coard,  Jeremy Corbyn MP and other invited guests.

In How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System: The Scandal of the Black Child in Schools, first published in 1971 by New Beacon Books, Bernard Coard examined the enforced educational inequality and institutional racism in the UK.  Fifty years on Coard reviewed his work.

Read on ...

A Travesty of Justice

Over thirty years ago the United States invaded Grenada, following the killing of the leader of the Revolution, Maurice Bishop and others.  Their stated aim was to protect American students who were attending a private medical school in the country.

Their real objective was to ensure that the Revolution was quashed, following its collapse caused by the death of Bishop. To ensure that it did not return they placed the remaining leaders of the Revolution on trial for the murder of Bishop in a specially constituted court, with hired judges, a foreign prosecution team and existing judicial officials replaced by foreign hirelings.… Read on ...

Countering misreporting about Phyllis Coard, on the occasion of her death in September 2020

Statement by Anne Hickling-Hudson, Noreen Scott, Jean Tate, Jacqueline McKenzie and Dennis Bartholomew

Phyllis Coard died in Jamaica on 6th September 2020 at the age of 76, just two months short of her 77th birthday on 2nd November 2020. She has been remembered as a champion of the rights of women and children for the work that she organised and collectively implemented in Grenada during the Grenada revolution (1979 – 1983) led by Maurice Bishop. Two reports in e-newspapers in Grenada and Barbados (‘The New Today’, September 6th 2020, and ‘Barbados Today’, September 6th 2020) commenting on her life and death, contain statements that need to be put in context so as to help readers avoid misunderstandings.Read on ...

In Defence of Jeremy Corbyn

BACKGROUND

Many will know that Jeremy Corbyn has been a long-time fighter for racial equality in the United Kingdom and across the world. Many will also know the stalwart work he did in support of the Grenada Revolution.

Following its collapse in October 1983 he worked tirelessly to ensure that the remaining leaders of the Revolution were not executed on trumped up charges, brought by the invading US forces in a “kangaroo court”. Many will know how hard he worked to secure their release from their false imprisonment.

He was, and still remains, the President of the Committee For Human Rights In Grenada (UK), the organisation that led both campaigns, having been in this position since 1993.Read on ...

Comrade Sister Phyllis Coard

A Summary Tribute by Sister Jacqueline Mckenzie 

My friend Phyllis Coard, former Minister of Women’s Affairs during the Grenada Revolution, 1979 – 1983, and co founder of the National Women’s Organisation of Grenada has died today at her home in Jamaica aged 76.

Phyllis was one of 17 people and the only woman, convicted of the murder of Maurice Bishop, members of the People’s Revolutionary Government and civilians on October 19 1983 culminating in the illegal invasion of Grenada ordered by US president Ronald Reagan. The trial of the 17 was characterised by errors and widely criticised by legal jurists. She was sentenced to death but was released from prison on compassionate grounds in 2000.

Read on ...