15th May 1919 – 6th September 2005
Formidable and inspirational, Mary Eugenia Charles was a woman who worked tirelessly on behalf of her homeland, Dominica. As Prime Minister (the first woman to ever hold this post in the Caribbean), she dealt with international incidents and domestic issues alike with the same sense of honour, passion and pride.

The West Indies have long been a breeding ground for strong women. Indomitable in the face of hardship and oppression, holding families together in the bleakest of circumstances, often standing up to feckless or domineering men, they are the true pride of the islands – and there is no better example of such a woman than the formidable – and occasionally controversial – Mary Eugenia Charles.

Born in 1919, the granddaughter of former slaves and the daughter of a self-made man (who founded the first People’s Bank), Mary Eugenia rose through tireless study (Law at Toronto and the LSE), innate brilliance and force of character to rule her country as Prime Minister, eventually for fifteen years. The first female lawyer ever to practise on the island, she had been stung into political activism by the Sedition Act of 1968, which she saw as an outrageous assault on civil liberties. Soon she was Leader of the Opposition, a co-founder of the Dominica Freedom party which won independence from Britain in 1978. Her commitment to individual morality and liberty was uncompromising.

Her early years in office were marked by two seasons of devastating hurricanes – and other testing moments. In 1981 she had to see off an armed rebel attack on public buildings in Roseau. Two years later, as Chairman of the OECS (Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States), she had to deal with the military coup in Grenada. Only the USA had the resources necessary to handle the situation, and she had no compunction in calling them in. On the domestic side, while fully in favour of tourism, she remained determined to preserve the island’s natural heritage and traditional character. Night-clubs and casinos, all likely to attract the ‘wrong sort of visitor’ and foster organised crime, were simply banned.

Her sense of mission drove everything. Never one to suffer fools gladly, in her second term of office she retained foreign affairs, defence, economic affairs and finance in her own supremely capable hands. Affectionately known as ‘Mamo’, she ran Dominica. For the outside world – whether foreign politicians seeking to ‘patronise us because we are small and black’, or European bureaucrats penny-pinching on banana quotas – and for every kind of antisocial element back home, she was Dominica.

During her third term of office her popularity waned, and she retired in 1995. As with that other ‘Iron Lady’, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, she had both changed her homeland forever and championed its cause valiantly on the wider international scene. Still unmarried, ‘having never found a suitable man’, she returned to her old law practice and studied international politics, while still living with her father (as she had all her life) until his death. She herself passed away in 2005, her 87th year. In 1991 she had been made a Dame Commander of the British Empire – and for once the title rings true.