Eddie Seaga‘s election as prime minister in 1980 marked a critical moment in Jamaica’s history; one that broke the left-leaning consensus of its post-independence politics and set the country on a more conservative path that gained the approval of allies such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Seaga’s Jamaica Labour party (JLP), which had originally emerged from the island’s trade union movement, had been part of that consensus until he took over as its leader.