Jim Wardally has died

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Parent Category: Jan 2012

Category: Week end Jan 21st, 2012

Published on Sunday, 22 January 2012 16:17

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Trade unionist, James “Jim” Wardally has died in Sweden.Wardally’s death was announced in St. George’s on Monday by the Technical & Allied Workers Union (TAWU) which he served as its 4th President from March 1981 to March 1984.

A release from TAWU said Wardally died Monday morning at a medical facility in Oslo, Norway, Sweden where he has lived for the past 26 years teaching at the University of Stoekhoh. “The Management Committee of the Grenada Technical and Allied Workers’ Union conveys its profound sympathies to his mother Christina Lewis, children, siblings, comrades and friends. Further announcements will be made as preparations are on the way for the repatriation of his body in accordance with his wishes”, said the statement.

TAWU also announced an official period of mourning with its Union flag being flown at half post for 21 days from January 16 in memory of its former leader. It is believed that Wardally who was a leading figure of the 1979-83 Grenada Revolution succumbed to cancer after a lengthy battle.

Wardally has been living in Sweden for the past 27 years following the collapse of the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) in a bitter power struggle among moderates and hardliners for control of the then ruling left-leaning New Jewel Movement (NJM) of late Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop.

The late TAWU President attracted worldwide attention when he managed to flee the United States along with current TAWU Boss, Senator Chester Humphrey on gunrunning charges and showed up mysteriously in the Spice Isle within months of the triumph of the Revolution. The two Grenadians were arrested in the United States and charged with the illegal shipping of arms and ammunition to their homeland for alleged use by NJM in helping to topple the elected Eric Gairy government in the first coup d’etat in the English-speaking Caribbean.

Both Wardally and Humphrey were welcome back by the revolutionary figures as national heroes in the face of “cold relations” between St. George’s and Washington due to Grenada’s close ties to communist bloc countries especially Cuba and the Soviet Union.

After the October 25, 1983 U.S-led military operation in Grenada to restore order following the revolutionary blood-letting in which Bishop was executed at Fort Rupert now back to its original name, Fort George, law enforcement officials in the United States made an unsuccessful bid to get Humphrey extradited to the U.S to be put back on trial for the charges. However, Wardally had managed to leave the island for Sweden, considered a “neutral” country in the cold war era and did not face similar treatment like Sen. Humphrey.

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