Honorable Sir John George Melvin Compton  SLC, OCC, KCMG, LLB (Hons.) 1925 - 2007

Edited Statement by the Acting Prime Minister Hon. Stephenson King.   Click Play Button

Prime Minister John Compton, who guided his tiny Caribbean island to independence from Britain and infuriated China by restoring ties with Taiwan, has died, a member of his Cabinet said. He was 82.

Compton, a three-time leader of St. Lucia who became prime minister most recently in December, did not resume leadership duties after suffering a series of mild strokes in late April. He died Friday at the private Tapion Hospital in Castries, Commerce Minister Guy Mayers said.

The farmer and attorney became chief minister of the then-colony in 1964, negotiated for more autonomy from Britain three years later and became the first prime minister upon independence in 1979. Voted out of power later that year, he returned to govern the verdant, mountainous island from 1982 to 1996.

Many on the island, with a population today of 168,000, knew him affectionately as "Daddy Compton," particularly in the eastern villages where he won his first election in 1954.

He gained a reputation for fearlessness three years later as a union leader directing a strike against the sugar-growing elite for better labor conditions, getting arrested after a confrontation in which he dared a white planter to run him over with a tractor. Like roughly 90 percent of his fellow islanders, Compton was black.

On the issue of sovereignty, Compton was uncompromising. At the 1967 London conference that resulted in self-government, he dropped a diplomatic bombshell in criticizing Britain for refusing to include issues of aid, trade and migration in the talks.

"The color of our skins is against us," Compton told a room full of several British officials, "and a government, even one that professes democracy, is pleased to legislate and propound the doctrine of second-class citizenship for people of another color."

Compton governed as a pro-Western conservative and took heat for welcoming U.S. military training exercises during the Cold War. He told critics the Caribbean needed Washington to fight drug trafficking and communism.

But he also prided himself as a regionalist. In a farewell address in 1996, he described the failure of his proposals for closer ties among Eastern Caribbean states as a key frustration of his career.

"It is a disappointment that I may not see ourselves entering the 21st century as one people, one nation, with one destiny, but rather as a divided people scattered over the Caribbean Sea," he said.

Compton made an enemy of the world's most populous nation upon his latest return to office when his government restored ties with Taiwan, which previously had relations with St. Lucia under Compton. China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province, broke off relations and condemned the reversal as a "brutal interference" in its internal affairs.

At home beginning in the 1960s, Compton oversaw the development of highways, airports, industrial complexes and housing projects on the 240-square-mile (620 square-kilometer) island.

Some called him a dreamer for proposals including one to dredge several acres of swampland in northern St. Lucia known as a breeding ground for flies and mosquitoes. Today, the same area, Rodney Bay, hosts a modern shopping area, several of the island's finest hotels and a yacht marina.

Born in 1925 on the nearby island of Canouan, St. Vincent, Compton attended high school in St. Lucia and worked in oil refineries in Curacao for two years before studying in the United Kingdom, where he qualified as a lawyer at the University of Wales. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.

Compton, who founded his United Workers Party 43 years ago, had resigned as its leader in 1996 but came out of retirement nine years later after his successor lost general elections. He defeated Prime Minister Kenny Anthony's bid for a third five-year term at the polls last year in an upset.

He is survived by his wife, Lady Janice Compton, and five children.