Sir John Compton, Prime Minister of St. Lucia

The lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us,
Footprints on the sands of time.
(Longfellow, A Psalm of Life)

During our lives we cross paths with ordinary, and sometimes public personalities who make an exceptional impression on us. Sir John Compton was ordinary, and public, and he crossed my path.

I had the good fortune in my early career not only to meet this extraordinary individual, but to work in his department as a planning economist. At that time he was Premier of St. Lucia, a small island in the eastern Caribbean, that had just achieved semi independence as an "associated state" of Great Britain. I did not know then that he would become known as the Father of the Nation of St. Lucia, and one of a number of visionary political leaders of the Caribbean, including Eric Williams, Forbes Burnham, Grantley Adams, Errol Barrow, Alexander Bustamante, T.A. Marryshow, Norman Manley, Vere Bird and Eugenia Charles.

I had just graduated with a Masters degree in economics and took on the challenge of an assignment organized by a Canadian aid agency, Canadian University Services Overseas (CUSO) as a planning economist assigned to the Development Planning and Statistics Division, Office of the Premier, Government of St. Lucia. In that office were a group of exceptional people gathering statistics, and formulating economic and financial policy for the fledgling government. Charles Cadet headed planning, George Gerard headed finance, and Merle Alexander headed statistics, while David Carney was assigned as a United Nations economic advisor, and Leonard Robinson and John Henry were local economists. Supporting the Government and the region by setting up the Caribbean Development Bank was Sir Arthur Lewis, later to be named the winner of the nobel prize in economics in 1979, and a visionary in economic development.

None of us at that time would have thought that this somewhat reserved and shy, but very determined leader would become Prime Minister of a fully independent country with a vote in the United Nations five years later, let alone sit in the stands of a brand new stadium in Castries, St. Lucia thirty years later as Prime Minister in March/April, 2007, playing host to the World Cup of Cricket . Yet there he was, 82 year old Sir John Compton, Prime Minister of St. Lucia, as I watched on television from my home in Sydney, Australia. It was stunning to see.

His is a history of revolutionary activity followed by very sensible and conservative economic development policy. In his early years he took up the rights of plantation workers against the exploitation of white colonial plantation owners. He was branded a communist by vested interests, for his attempt to break the entrenched privileges of the ruling elite at the time, and to support a just economic outcome for labourers who were without question being exploited. The communist bogey was clearly used by plantation owners as a fear factor to discredit this enlightened leader, and is not dissimilar to the socialist bogey with which entrenched interests in the United States are today attempting to discredit Barack Obama.

When I was in St. Lucia he was anything but communist. He was conservative in his fiscal and economic policies, and he presided over an economy that became stronger and more diversified, and was structured to provide a funded pension for those no longer in the work force. From an economy based on sugar cane plantations, St. Lucia eventually developed a broader base for agriculture, a thriving tourist industry, and light manufacturing suited to a small island economy. It was a foundation for much higher average incomes, and lower instances of poverty in St Lucia today.

In my diary when I was in St. Lucia, I once jotted down the last stanza of Rudyard Kipling's "IF"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your
virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common
touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt
you;
If all men count with you, but none too
much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And-- which is more--you'll be a Man, my
son!

As it turns out, "IF" was the Right Honourable Sir John Melvin Compton's favourite poem.

He passed away at the age of 82 on Friday 7th September, 2007, four months after he delivered a marathon four hour visionary budget presentation to parliament, and four months after I saw him on television from Sydney, Australia, hosting the World Cup of Cricket.


His was a path worth crossing.