Sky Red, 1951: The Strike That Made Eric Gairy and Remade Politics

In February 1951, agricultural workers across Grenada walked off the estates. Within days the island was in turmoil: marches through St George's, estate buildings and crops set alight, police reinforcements brought in from neighbouring islands, and a young union leader arrested and shipped to Carriacou. The burning gave the episode its name in popular memory, "Sky Red", for the glow of fires on the night horizon.

The strike lasted about a month. Its consequences lasted decades. It made Eric Matthew Gairy the most powerful political figure in Grenada, broke the political hold of the planter and merchant class, and coincided with the arrival of universal adult suffrage. Almost every argument in Grenadian politics until 1979 can be traced back to what happened in those weeks.

The countryside before the strike

A century after emancipation, rural Grenada remained deeply unequal. Large estates growing cocoa, nutmeg, bananas and some sugar dominated the best land, and their owners, along with St George's merchants, dominated the Legislative Council. Estate labourers earned very low daily wages, often lived in poor housing on or near the estates, and had little legal protection. Many supplemented their income with small plots of their own, but access to land was precarious.

The Caribbean labour unrest of the 1930s, which swept Trinidad, Barbados, Jamaica and other colonies, had produced trade unions and labour parties elsewhere, but in Grenada the movement that emerged was led mostly by middle-class figures in St George's, with limited reach into the estates. Rural workers, the largest group in the population, had no organisation of their own that could speak for them with force. That gap was what Gairy filled.

Who Eric Gairy was

Gairy was born in 1922 in the parish of St Andrew and, like many young Grenadians of his generation, left to find work abroad. He spent several years in Aruba, where he worked in the oil industry and became involved in labour organising. He returned to Grenada around 1949 and quickly founded a union aimed squarely at rural and manual workers, the Grenada Manual and Metal Workers' Union, often known by its initials, GMMWU, in 1950.

He was a charismatic speaker with an instinct for theatre, dressing in white, drawing on religious language and presenting himself as the champion of the poor against the estate owners. His appeal to rural Grenadians, who had been largely ignored by the existing political elite, was immediate. Estate owners and much of the colonial establishment regarded him as a dangerous agitator; to many workers he was the first politician who spoke to them directly.

How the strike unfolded

Accounts differ on details, and dates for the end of the strike vary between sources. The broad sequence is well established:

1. Through 1950, the GMMWU recruited rapidly on the estates and pressed employers for wage increases and recognition, with disputes and stoppages on individual estates.
2. On 19 February 1951, a general strike of agricultural and other workers began across the island after employers refused the union's demands.
3. On 21 February, Gairy was arrested after leading a demonstration in St George's and was detained on Carriacou, a move intended to remove him from the scene.
4. Unrest spread rather than subsided. Estate buildings, crops and property were burned in several parishes, giving rise to the Sky Red name. Police reinforcements were brought from other islands and a British warship was sent.
5. Gairy was released and appealed for calm, demonstrating that he could stop the disturbances as well as lead them, a fact not lost on colonial officials.
6. By March the strike had ended with an agreement that gave workers significant wage increases and recognised the union's role in bargaining.

Universal suffrage and the 1951 election

The strike coincided with a constitutional change already in train: the introduction of universal adult suffrage. Until then, voting had been restricted by property and income qualifications that excluded most Grenadians. In the general election held later in 1951, the first in which all adults could vote, Gairy's newly formed Grenada United Labour Party (GULP) won six of the eight elected seats in the Legislative Council.

The result transformed Grenadian politics. Power moved, at least in electoral terms, from the old elite to a party based on rural workers. The GULP would dominate elections for most of the next quarter century, and Gairy would hold office as Chief Minister, Premier and, after 1974, Prime Minister. The opposition coalesced around the Grenada National Party, led for much of this period by Herbert Blaize, which drew support from the middle class and parts of St George's.

Gairy's turbulent decades

Disenfranchisement in 1957. Gairy was barred from voting and standing for office for several years following a court case over his conduct during the 1957 election campaign, when he led a steel band through a meeting of his opponents. The penalty removed him from the legislature for a period.

The 1962 suspension. After returning to office, Gairy's government was removed in 1962 when the British administrator suspended the constitution, citing irregular spending, an episode remembered by the word "squandermania". Blaize's party won the election that followed.

Return to power. Gairy and the GULP won again in 1967, the year Grenada became an associated state, and he led the country into independence in 1974.

Growing authoritarianism. Through the late 1960s and 1970s critics accused his government of using patronage, intimidation and an irregular force known as the Mongoose Gang against opponents, grievances that fed the rise of the New Jewel Movement and his overthrow in 1979.

How to read Sky Red today

Historians and Grenadians still disagree on how to assess Gairy and 1951. For supporters, the strike was a long-overdue revolt that brought dignity, higher wages and political voice to rural people who had been treated as little better than they had been under slavery. For critics, it began a style of politics built on personality, patronage and fear that eventually damaged Grenada's institutions. Both views contain truth, and many older Grenadians hold elements of each.

What is not disputed is that the events of February and March 1951 changed who counted in Grenadian politics. Every party since has had to compete for the rural vote, and the trade union movement that grew out of the period remains a significant force. The name Sky Red has also been used for later writing and commentary on the period, which helps keep the episode in public memory.

What the strike changed on the estates

The immediate gains were material. Wage rates for agricultural labour rose substantially after the settlement, and the union won a recognised place in bargaining with estate owners for the first time. Workers who had negotiated individually, from a position of almost total weakness, now had an organisation that could call a stoppage across the island. Estate owners who had dealt with labour as a private matter found themselves facing collective demands backed by a mass movement.

The longer-term changes were political and social. Rural Grenadians, especially in St Andrew, St Patrick, St David and St John, became the core of a voting bloc that parties ignored at their peril. Patronage, in the form of jobs, land and favours distributed through the governing party, became a central feature of politics, for good and ill. Some estates were later broken up or acquired, partly in response to pressure for land, and the long decline of the large estate economy continued through the following decades.

The episode also showed colonial officials that Grenada could not be governed against the wishes of its rural majority, a lesson that helped speed the path towards ministerial government, associated statehood and, eventually, independence.

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