ABSTRACT
On 19 September 1983 in Basseterre, St Kitts and Charlestown, Nevis, the final curtain fell on the last act of the British decolonisation production, ‘Associated Statehood’. The actors had for long played to diminishing audiences, although a touch of drama persisted to the very end, with the Kittitian Labourite opposition boycotting the dénouement. But within a matter of weeks, the USA invaded Grenada and installed a government to its liking, with the official support of all the other Commonwealth Leeward and Windward Islands. The question of their political and economic viability and vulnerability as very small territories —the reason for their particular route to formal decolonisation —was by that act dramatically reinforced. The USA, and Grenada’s neighbours, would not tolerate political or economic experiments designed to first circumvent and then rise above the twin constraints of small size and underdevelopment, which did not conform to rule as bequeathed by British colonialism.
