Grenada renames airport to honour Maurice Bishop

Grenadian Prime Minister Tillman Thomas has kept an election pledge to honour the late revolutionary leader Maurice Bishop and has renamed the island's main airport the Maurice Bishop International Airport.

The event coincided with the 65 birth anniversary of Bishop. St Vincent and the Grenadines' Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, who delivered the feature address at the weekend dedication ceremony, called it "an act of the Grenadian people coming home to themselves, out of the agony and compromises, pain and joy".

He said, "Grenada and Maurice has come home symbolically and in reality...this belated honour to an outstanding Caribbean son will bring closure to a chapter of denial in Grenada's history."

Bishop played a major part in getting assistance from Cuba to build the Point Salines International Airport that now carries his name. Some Grenadians were not pleased with the gesture but Thomas kept his promise and went ahead with the project.

Bishop became Prime Minister of Grenada in 1979 after his New Jewel Movement (NJM) staged a bloodless coup and took over the government from Sir Eric Gairy. However, in 1983, a faction within the party attempted to get Bishop to either step down or agree to a power-sharing agreement with Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard.

Bishop rejected that. The Coard faction subsequently deposed Bishop and placed him under house arrest during the first week of October 1983. Huge pro-Bishop demonstrations led to the leader's release, which precipitated the army execution of Bishop and some members of his cabinet and the invasion of the island by American marines.

Read more about the events of 1983
More on the U.S. invasion