Early Life and Beginnings of Political Career
Compton was born in 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. His political career began in 1954, when he ran as an independent for the seat from Micoud/Dennery in Saint Lucia and was elected. He was appointed to the Executive Council and, under the Committee System then used, became Member for Social Affairs until the end of the Committee System in 1956. In the latter year, he joined the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP). He notably participated in a sugar workers' strike in 1957, and was fined for obstructing roads. Re-elected in 1957, he became Minister for Trade and Production in 1958, and also became deputy leader of the SLP, under George Charles. In 1960 he was named Minister of Trade and Industry under Charles, who became Chief Minister. Compton was again re-elected in 1961, but chose not to join the Executive Council; objecting to the choice of ministers, he quit the SLP and along with his supporters he formed a new party, the National Labour Movement, in the same year.
In 1964, together with another opposition party, the People's Progressive Party, he and the National Labour Movement formed a new party, the United Workers' Party (UWP). This new party won the election held in June 1964, and Compton became Chief Minister.
Read more about this topic: John Compton
Famous quotes containing the words political career, early, life, beginnings, political and/or career:
“He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“This death’s livery which walled its bearers from ordinary life was sign that they have sold their wills and bodies to the State: and contracted themselves into a service not the less abject for that its beginning was voluntary.”
—T.E. (Thomas Edward)
“Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“No political party can ever make prohibition effective. A political party implies an adverse, an opposing, political party. To enforce criminal statutes implies substantial unanimity in the community. This is the result of the jury system. Hence the futility of party prohibition.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)