John Compton
1st and former Prime Minister of Saint Lucia (1925–2007)
Sir John George Melvin Compton, (29 April 1925 – 7 September 2007) was a Saint Lucian politician who became the first prime minister upon independence in February 1979. Having led Saint Lucia under British rule from 1964 to 1979, Compton served as prime minister three times: briefly in 1979, again from 1982 to 1996, and from 2006 until his death in 2007. He cofounded the conservative United Workers Party (UWP) in 1964; he led the party until 1996, again from 1998 to 2000, and again from 2005 to 2007.
Early life and education
Compton was born on 29 April 1925 in Canouan, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. In September 1939, he was taken to Saint Lucia. While studying law and economics, Compton attended the University College of Wales from 1948 to 1949 and the London School of Economics from 1949 to 1951; he was called to the Bar on 7 August 1951.
Political career
Beginnings
Compton entered politics in 1954, successfully running for the Micoud/Dennery seat on the Saint Lucia Executive Council as an independent. He became the Council Member for Social Affairs in 1955, and served in this position until the Committee System was replaced by the Ministerial System in 1956. That same year, he joined the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP).
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This entry incorporates text from “John Compton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.