KINGSTON, Jamaica – One of Jamaica's closest allies at the end of the Cold War in the 1980s was Great Britain under then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as the Conservative Party in that country and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) shared a similar vision. Dubbed the 'Iron Lady', Thatcher was a close political ally of former prime minister of Jamaica, Edward Seaga, described as another leader of steely mettle. Both flaunted implacable demeanours as they steered their ships of state through the turbulent waters of a world fiercely divided by political ideology. This was so much the case that one of Seaga's protégés, Harold Brady, was elected executive secretary in 1989 to support Thatcher at the helm of the International Democratic Union (IDU), a centre-right international alliance of conservative, Christian democratic and liberal-conservative political parties.
