'Ralph Everard Gonsalves' (born
August 8,
1946), also known as "Comrade Ralph", is the
Prime Minister of
St Vincent and the Grenadines. He has held that position since
March 29 2001. He is leader of the
Unity Labour Party, and won the 2001 general elections by a landslide of 12 seats to 3, after a close run in the 1998 elections. He was re-elected in the December 2005 elections with the same parliamentary ratio.
He first entered political life as a student at the
University of the West Indies at
Mona, Jamaica; in 1968, as president of the Guild of Undergraduates, Gonsalves led the student protest at the banning of popular historian and intellectual
Walter Rodney.
Gonsalves received his Ph.D. in political science from UWI, Mona, and went on to receive a law degree from the University of the West Indies,
Cave Hill, Barbados before returning to practise law and become an active politician in his homeland.
He has said, "Modern terrorism is a barbarism out of sync with civilized life."
[1]
Bibliography
(adapted from
[2])
'Books'
★ The spectre of
imperialism: the case of the
Caribbean (
University of the West Indies; 128 pages, 1976)
★ The non-
capitalist path of development:
Africa and the Caribbean (One Caribbean Publishers; 1981)
★ History and the future: a Caribbean perspective (169 pages, 1994)
★ Notes on some basic ideas in
Marxism-Leninism (University of the West Indies; 56 pages)
'Pamphlets'
★ The
Rodney affair and its aftermath (University of the West Indies; 21 pages, 1975)
★ The development and class character of the
bourgeois state: the case of St. Vincent (University of the West Indies; 15 pages, 1976)
★ Controls and influences on the
civil service and statutory bodies in the
Commonwealth Caribbean: a preliminary discussion (University of the West Indies; 67 pages, 1977)
★ The development of the
labour movement in St. Vincent (37 pages, 1977)
★ Who killed
sugar in St. Vincent? (
United Liberation Movement; 21 pages, 1977)
★ On the
political economy of
Barbados (One Caribbean Publishers; 49 pages, 1981)
★ The
trade union movement in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (
Movement for National Unity; 64 pages, 1983)
★
Ebenezer Joshua: his
ideology and style (Movement for National Unity; 39 pages, 1984)
★ (editor) The trial of
George McIntosh (Caribbean Diaspora Press; 80 pages, 1985)
★ Authority in the
police force: its uses and abuses (Movement for National Unity; 45 pages, 1986)
★
Banana in trouble: its present and future (Movement for National Unity; 22 pages, 1989)