Sir John Compton

Who is Sir John Compton?

Sir John George Melvin Compton was a Saint Lucian politician who served as the country's first Prime Minister upon independence from Britain in 1979 and remains the dominant figure in modern Saint Lucian politics. Born in the village of Canaries in 1925, he studied law in London before returning to the Caribbean and entering politics in the 1950s. He founded the United Workers Party in 1964 and served as Chief Minister and then Premier of Saint Lucia under colonial self-government before leading the island to full independence on 22 February 1979. He went on to serve multiple further terms as Prime Minister, including from 1982 to 1996 and again from 2006 until his death in 2007, making him the longest-serving head of government in Saint Lucia's history. His decades in office spanned the transition from a plantation-based colonial economy toward tourism and bananas as pillars of the national economy, and he was a leading voice in early regional integration efforts among the Eastern Caribbean states. He was knighted for his services to Saint Lucia and is commemorated as the country's founding Prime Minister.

Sources: Government of Saint Lucia, official history of independence (1979) · Caribbean Elections, Saint Lucia biographical archive · BBC News obituary, "Sir John Compton" (2007)