Lawyer and revolutionary Maurice Bishop was one of the leaders of a demonstration in 1970 in support of a protest movement that took place at the same time in Trinidad and Tobago; the Grenadian opponents took advantage of this context to denounce the corruption of Gairy's government.

Gairy's government received financial assistance from the United Kingdom, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana to pay civil servants and continue to operate the state until the day of independence.

[citation needed] Faced with the rise in power of the New Jewel Movement, Eric Gairy at the beginning of 1979 considered taking action and having members of the party's leadership arrested.

The NJM also formed a small, armed clandestine group placed under the leadership of former prison guard and police officer Hudson Austin, one of the only party officials with military training.

Thanks to help from Cuba, the People's Revolutionary Army quickly saw its numbers increase from around fifty men to around 2,000, a figure greater than that of all the other armed forces combined in the Antilles region.

The line defended by Bernard Coard was situated in a more radical communist logic, even Stalinist, on a certain number of points and recommended a more strictly Leninist organization of the party, which continued after its seizure of power to be led in the manner of an underground movement.

Bernard Coard's good mastery of Marxist-Leninist theoretical concepts often allowed him, thanks to the deference of Bishop and his entourage for Leninist analyses, to dominate internal debates within the party leadership.

In November 1979, a plot against the government mounted by a former police officer, Wilton de Ravenière, was discovered; in June 1980, during a public meeting, a bomb exploded under the official platform on which Maurice Bishop and other personalities were located.

While the People's Revolutionary Government of Grenada, unlike other "socialist" regimes in the Third World, did not practice large-scale violence against its opponents — refraining from executing them or sentencing them to forced labor — the preventive detentions were frequent.

The situation was different concerning the written press, owned by private capital: from the month of September 1979, Bishop accused various newspapers, including the conservative publication Torchlight, of engaging in "acts of destabilization".

On the economic level, the Revolutionary Government operated in a very unfavorable context: Grenada, whose economy relies largely on tourism (the island mainly produces nutmeg and bananas), suffers from both the consequences of Hurricane Allen and the fall in export prices.

[4] The deterioration of the economic environment made market mechanisms less effective, while planning failed to achieve the objectives set and Grenada is, more broadly, afflicted with all the ills specific to developing countries (lack of natural resources, qualified personnel, technologies and absence of manufacturing industry).

After his overthrow, Eric Gairy denounced a communist coup in his country and tried to obtain American aid: the State Department nevertheless tended to rely on the United Kingdom for analysis of the situation.

The ambassador assured Maurice Bishop and Bernard Coard that the United States had no intention of allowing Gairy to raise an army and invade Grenada from their territory; but the diplomat made several blunders, firstly by warning Bishop and Coard of the risks of a drop in tourism in their country in the event of political unrest, then by giving them a press release indicating that the United States would take a dim view a military alliance of Grenada with Cuba, even with a view to defending itself against a possible attack.

Relations between the two countries continued to be strained throughout the rest of 1979 until the end of Jimmy Carter's term in the White House, notably when several American citizens were briefly arrested in Grenada.

In addition to its alliance with Cuba, the government of Maurice Bishop also received, in 1980, the support of Daniel Ortega, Sandinista president of Nicaragua, who announced his solidarity with the revolution in Grenada.

In addition to links with Latin American left-wing governments, Maurice Bishop told the central committee of the New Jewel Movement that he aimed to maintain good relations with all countries of the world, with the exception of "fascist dictatorships".

Relations with the United States continued to be very tense — Maurice Bishop's support for the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan finally deteriorated them at the beginning of 1980 — and was, particularly after the election of Ronald Reagan as president, marked by a series of aggressive declarations from both sides.

The Grenadian government, for its part, came to fear an American invasion on its soil: in March 1983, maneuvers by the US Navy in Caribbean waters alarmed Maurice Bishop enough to make him leave the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement which he attended in India, to rush back to the country to put the armed forces on alert.

Within the People's Revolutionary Government and the New Jewel Movement, the power struggle between Maurice Bishop and Bernard Coard resulted over the years in the ousting of those close to the Prime Minister.

The personal ambition of Bernard Coard, who considered himself more intelligent and more qualified than Maurice Bishop, seemed to have played a driving role in triggering the final crisis, more than any other objective political factor.

The meeting took place in a hateful atmosphere: Bishop was accused of being a "petty-bourgeois opportunist" incapable of leading the country towards socialism, and of not wanting to establish joint leadership of the party.

Erroll George was summoned to appear and reiterate his accusations regarding the plot against Bishop; the latter remained silent which was interpreted as an admission of guilt in disseminating the coup d'état thesis.

The confusion was then extreme in Grenada: Bernard Coard, in an attempt to repair Strachan's blunder and calm the supporters of Maurice Bishop, announced his resignation, but other information presented him as still being in power.

Bishop was carried in triumph on the shoulders of his supporters, who paraded through the streets of Saint-Georges; the Prime Minister then led the crowd towards the Fort Rupert military base, located near the city's port, in order to take control of it.

Shortly after, an officer returned with instructions and told them that their execution had been decided by the central committee of the party; the eight prisoners — including Jacqueline Creft, seven months pregnant — were shot with machine guns.

The United Kingdom, while refraining from officially condemning the American initiative, was showing its irritation at not having been kept informed of the intervention in a country of which Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state.

On 4 December 1986, 17 of the accused were convicted and one acquitted; ten former members of the NJM central committee were sentenced to death, including Hudson Austin, Bernard and Phyllis Coard, Selwyn Strachan and Liam James.

Despite the controversial nature of his regime, Maurice Bishop continues to be considered, by at least part of Grenada's public opinion, as a political leader worthy of esteem, due to the social reforms undertaken by his government.

Bernard Coard and thirteen other convicts remained detained until 2009, when, after the British Privy Council ordered a review of the sentences, the Supreme Court of the Grenada authorized their release.