Rupert Bishop
Rupert Bishop was a shopkeeper in St George's who was shot dead by the police and the Mongoose Gang in January 1974, three weeks before Grenada became independent, while standing in a doorway between the guns and a room of women and children; his son Maurice took the country five years later. He had gone to Aruba in the 1940s to work in the oil refinery at Lago, as thousands of Grenadians did, and Maurice was born there in 1944; the family came home in 1950 and he set up in trade in the capital, prosperous enough to send the boy to the Catholic secondary school and then to London to read law. Maurice came back in 1970, founded the New Jewel Movement in 1973, and by the end of that year was leading the strikes and demonstrations that were trying to stop Eric Gairy taking the island into independence with himself as prime minister for life. Gairy's answer was the Mongoose Gang, criminals paid from the treasury, and the police who worked with them. On 18 November 1973 they beat Maurice and five others nearly to death at Grenville; the day was called Bloody Sunday. The general strike that followed closed the port and the electricity, and on Monday 21 January 1974 a demonstration in St George's was attacked by the gang and the police with guns and tear gas. Rupert Bishop was in Otway House, the seamen's union building, where the marchers had taken shelter; he put himself in the doorway and was shot through the chest, the one death of Bloody Monday. Independence came on 7 February with the bunting up and the shops shut. Gairy was never charged. In March 1979 Maurice's movement took the barracks while Gairy was abroad, and Maurice governed for four years until his own party shot him in October 1983. The father's death was the event that turned the son's movement from a protest into a resolve to remove Gairy by any means.
- Nationality: Grenadian
- Roles: businessman
