Edward Oliver LeBlanc (3 October 1923 – 29 October 2004) was a Dominican politician who served as the chief minister from January 1961 to 1 March 1967 and as the first premier from 1 March 1967 to 27 July 1974. Born in Vieille Case, a village in the north of the island, LeBlanc attended the local school and studied agriculture at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad. He worked in the civil service and became a member of the Dominica Trade Union. An early member of the Dominica Labour Party (DLP), he served as a representative in the country's Legislative Council representing the constituency of Portsmouth between 1957 and 1958, and as a representative of Dominica in the Federal Parliament of the West Indies Federation upon its foundation in 1958. LeBlanc left the federation in 1960 to run for election to the national legislature.
In the 1961 general election, LeBlanc was elected to the constituency of Roseau South and was sworn in as the chief minister and minister of finance. He was dedicated to representing the working class, particularly developing the nation's infrastructure, education and culture. He worked to develop Dominica's roads system and championed the native dance bélé, the Kwéyòl language and the country's national day. On 1 March 1967, Dominica was granted associated statehood and LeBlanc became the first premier. The DLP began to face challenges from the newly established Dominica Freedom Party and the growing youth and Rastafarian movements. In the 1970 general election, LeBlanc was challenged by three of his ministers, Nicholson Ducreay, W. S. Stevens and Mabel Moir James, but he formed a new party for the election, the LeBlanc Labour Party and succeeded in winning eight of the eleven seats in the legislature.
LeBlanc resigned as premier on 27 July 1974 and was replaced by his deputy premier Patrick John. He was a delegate at the Constitutional Conference in May 1977 but otherwise retired from public life, returning to his hometown in Vieille Case. LeBlanc was honoured with the Dominica Award of Honour in 1976 and he has been described as "father of the nation".
LeBlanc was born on 3 October 1923 in Vieille Case, a village on the north coast of Dominica. Growing up in a rural environment, where the village was not connected to the rest of the island by roads, significantly shaped his political leanings. Later in life, LeBlanc would often speak about his own informal education, which led to his contempt for those he considered intellectuals. He attended the local government school but when he applied for a scholarship for university, he was rejected for lacking a secondary school education. LeBlanc studied agriculture at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture (now part of the University of the West Indies) in Trinidad, graduating in 1944. In 1948, he received a London matriculated certificate. He joined the civil service in Dominica, working as an agricultural instructor, and often travelled through the rural portions of the island. A member of the Dominica Trade Union (DTU), he later began working for the Dominica Banana Growers Association and was elected to the local town council. In 1949, he married his wife Ethel and the couple had five children: Ewart, Erin, Einstar, Earlsworth and Eustace.
LeBlanc joined the Dominica Labour Party (DLP) in 1957, which had been established on 24 May 1955 by the trade unionist Emmanuel Christopher Loblack and the writer Phyllis Shand Allfrey. He was elected to the Legislative Council in the 1957 general election to represent the constituency of Portsmouth, beating R. B. Douglas with 46.9% of the vote. Douglas was a powerful adversary, as a businessman who controlled trade between Portsmouth and the capital in Roseau, but LeBlanc captured public interest due to his charisma and for campaigning in patois. Despite LeBlanc's success, the DLP suffered many losses in its first election, including Allfrey's loss to Elkin Henry.
When Dominica joined the nascent West Indies Federation the following year, LeBlanc resigned from the legislative council and ran in the March 1958 federal elections to represent Dominica in the federation's legislative body, the Federal Parliament of the West Indies Federation. He was elected alongside Allfrey, with both DLP candidates receiving the most votes in the election. The elections were a Labour landslide, largely because the country's middle class saw no future in the federation and, believing it would soon collapse, did not field a strong candidate to oppose them. The federation – composed of ten member states, including Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and the former members of the Windward Islands – was intended to strength relationships in the region and was considered by some politicians to be a step towards independence. Based in Trinidad, the Federal House of Representatives was led by a small majority by the West Indian Federal Labour Party, with which the DLP had allied itself. The union was short-lived and the federation dissolved in 1962 when Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago both decided to leave.
LeBlanc returned to Dominica in 1960 after resigning from the federal parliament. Ahead of the 1961 general election, Allfrey challenged LeBlanc for leadership of the DLP on the basis of their ideological split; LeBlanc pushed for independence from the British Empire and increased separation from the DTU, while Allfrey preferred changes within the existing colonial structure. LeBlanc won the leadership and expelled Allfrey and, later, Loblack from the party in 1964. In the election on 17 January 1961, he won one of the eleven seats in the legislature, defeating Frank Baron to represent the Roseau South constituency. The DLP was challenged in the election by the Dominica United People's Party (DUPP), which had been founded by Baron and R. H. Lockhart the same year. The DLP won 47.5% of the vote and 7 seats in the legislature, with the DUPP winning 25.6% of the vote and 4 seats. This was the party's first major electoral victory and LeBlanc was sworn in as the chief minister and minister of finance. He was the first person of his background – being described as the "little boy from the country" – to have become the head of government for the country.
Following the election, LeBlanc and his allies shifted the focus of the DLP to suit the issues that he had campaigned for – the party moved away from its role as the political arm of the DTU and colonial politics to become a working class party that was open to middle class intellectuals. While the DLP under Allfrey and Loblack had a socialist lean which continued under LeBlanc, he felt that they had not gone far enough. LeBlanc was committed to achieving independence from Britain and to helping poor workers, whom he called "little men", a catchphrase that still remains in Dominican politics. He had a strong relationship with the working class and black communities, who felt represented in government for the first time, although his focus on rural citizens was frequently contrasted with his contempt for those that he considered elite, notably those from Roseau who had historically held political power, which were often described by the DLP as the "mulatto gros bourg". LeBlanc was described by the writer Selwyn Ryan as "a radical populist who sought to govern Dominica on behalf of the black masses. He was a man of the people and a leader to whom the masses and the petit bourgs had ready access and who could speak their language". One of his first acts as chief minister was to insist that local people should be invited to state functions, rather than British expatriates.
As chief minister, LeBlanc was focused on infrastructure, education and national pride. One significant accomplishment was expanding the nation's roads system, which benefited the agricultural industry. LeBlanc was often frustrated by leading a country still under colonial British rule. During the early 1960s, he was focused on infrastructure development, as much of the island was still unconnected by roads but the colonial administrators refused to pay to build any major roads as they claimed not to have the funds, although they would build feeder roads. In response, LeBlanc established a system to divide the roads that he wanted constructed into sections and request funds from the British government to construct each section separately. Using this strategy, he succeeded in building a road to connect the coastal villages to the ports in Roseau and Portsmouth. The LeBlanc government mandated a primary school education for local children and constructed the Dominica Grammar School, which included a technical training programme, Portsmouth Secondary School and Clifton Dupigny Technical College. It established a National Providence Fund, to provide pensions, funded affordable housing in Canefield and helped to re-vitalise village councils.