The Grenada Government has indicated that Sir Eric Matthew Gairy will be treated in death as a national hero by being accorded a state funeral

In the last few weeks before his death, the Grenada High Court determined that Sir Eric Matthew Gairy, the man who literally bullied Grenada into Independence 23 years ago, was incapable of managing his own affairs.

Debilitated by blindness and a stroke, the once flamboyant Sir Eric, 75, had literally gone mad, apparently, believing that he was still prime minister.

One of his doctors, Dr Barry Rapier, said that Gairy's mental state had "deteriorated significantly since I saw him three months ago… he believes he is still prime minister of Grenada and often issues instructions to call Cabinet meetings".

On June 19, High Court Judge Lyle St Paul gave control of his estate to his two daughters, Jennifer and Marcelle Gairy.

Gairy's death came as a pathetic anti-climax to a tumultuous career of one of the Caribbean's most colourful and despotic politicians.

On Saturday night, his wasted body was found at his hotel home by an official of his union.

Gairy defined Grenada's politics for almost a half century. He was charismatic, controversial and autocratic, and his excesses led to his government being overthrown on March 13, 1979 and an authoritarian leftist regime being imposed on this tiny Caricom State of 100,000.

In 1950, at the age of 28, Gairy, who had been knocking around the Caribbean looking for work, decided to lay down his bucket in Grenada, making the one critical move that would irrevocably change his life.

He organized disgruntled agricultural workers in Grenada into a new trade union he founded, the Grenada Manual and Mental Workers Trade Union.

A "disciple" of his famous countryman Tubal Uriah Butler, Gairy lived in Trinidad for a number of years, working at the American Naval Base at Chaguaramas during World War II, and attending Butler's meetings in the post-war days. By 1951, he had become a working class hero when he successfully organized an island-wide strike.

This led to his winning a seat in the General Election that same year as leader of the Grenada United Labour Party (GULP) which he also founded. It was the beginning of the Gairy legend - "Gairyism" as they called it in Grenada.

Tall, slim and handsome, Gairy was a flashy dresser, ladies' man and a demagogue possessed of compelling oratory and immense charm.

But it was his standing up to the Grenada planter class and winning benefits for the farm workers that endeared him forever to Grenadians - despite all his buffoonery, the allegations of corruption and his woeful lack of administrative skills.

In 1961, when he was Chief Minister and Minister of Finance and Grenada was still a colony, the British Government was forced to suspend the constitution when it discovered massive Government corruption - an episode that came to be known as "Squandermania".

But Gairy bounced back, as he did in 1954, when his seat was declared vacant because he missed too many sittings and also in 1956 when he was disenfranchised.

He retained his seat in 1962, although his party did not win the election. In 1967, he regained power, sweeping aside Herbert Blaize's, Grenada National Party (GNP).

His wife, Sylvia, was also elected and she was given a Cabinet portfolio.

His party won again in 1972 but his highhandedness, quixotic actions and maladministration aggravated his detractors, including a group of young agitators, the New Jewel Movement (NJM) led by British-trained lawyer Maurice Bishop.

The NJM began a Caribbean-wide campaign of agitation against Gairy, methods who irritated, summoned his paramilitary unit, the "Mongoose Gang" - patterned somewhat on the lines of Duvalier's feared "Ton Ton Macoute" - to apply strong-armed methods.

The "Mongoose Gang", a group of incorrigible roughnecks, constantly in and out of prison, were wholly enthusiastic in their "duties" as quasi-public servants and there were always pictures in the Trinidad and Tobago press of a battered Maurice Bishop and other members of the NJM.

When the British Government decided to grant Grenada independence, Gairy met the then biggest challenge of his political career when the opposition parties, the trade unions, the Chamber of Commerce and community organizations in an unprecedented show of unity against his government shut down the country on the days prior to Independence Day, February 7, 1974.

As political reporter for the Express in that era, I spent considerable time in Grenada and was there for this unusual show of resistance to the GULP leading Grenada into Independence. All services - electricity, telephones, and to some extent the water supply - were shut down and businessmen closed their premises. This unusual political action was aimed at forcing the British Government to have second thoughts about granting Grenada independence under Gairy.

No such luck.

Gairy, in a three-minute Independence speech, charged that "immeasurable damage was done to the new nation by the enemies of progress…these enemies of progress have done more damage than Hurricane Janet".

The general strike attracted the international press, dumbfounded by the logic of it all in an era of decolonization - an age when people in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and elsewhere had taken military action to oust their colonial masters.

Gairy, the showman, perhaps, saw opportunity in such unwelcome attention by the international press and was always available for interviews and press conferences, impressing journalists at his adroitness to field difficult questions and amusing them with his unabashed obsession with UFOs.

In the 1976 general election, Gairy lost some ground t the alliance of the GNP and the NJM but retained power.

By March 1979, a misguided NJM felt that extra-constitutional methods were needed to rid Grenada of the scourge of Gairyism.

Gairy fled to the United States, returning in 1984, a few months after the Bishop regime self-destructed.

He remained largely a spent but still respected political force.

His party never won another election and he himself was defeated at the polls.

In the last elections in June 1995, his party, though still feared by the incumbents, the New Democratic Party, and current Prime Minister Keith Mitchell's New National Party, could only win two of the 15 seats.

Gairy, plagued by failing eyesight and illness, was too weak to campaign - to harangue audiences in his revivalist style that combined mauvais langue and stinging personal attacks.

Gairy was one of Grenada's representatives at the historic Federation conference in Jamaica in 1957 and was one of the founding fathers of Carifta and Caricom.

The Grenada Government has indicated that he will be treated in death as a national hero by being accorded a state funeral.

The people of Grenada may also be burying Gairyism.

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