The Jamaica United Front was a

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

. It was a right wing small party and was first noticed when in 1980 it proposed a national unity government of the Jamaica Labour Party and the

People's National Party The People's National Party (PNP) is a social-democratic political party in Jamaica, founded in 1938 by independence campaigner Osmond Theodore Fairclough. It holds 14 of the 63 seats in the House of Representatives, as 96 of the 227 local go ...

. They were involved in an attempted coup on 23 June 1980. The leader, Charles Johnson, had been a member of the United States Army, serving in Vietnam and was running a security company in Kingston. The coup was seen by the left as a plot by the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

. Meanwhile the

Jamaican Labour Party The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) is one of the two major political parties in Jamaica, the other being the People's National Party (PNP). While its name might suggest that it is a social democratic party (as is the case for "Labour" parties in sever ...

(which had not been involved) saw it as an excuse to bring in troops from

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

prior to elections. Johnson was acquitted in 1981 when a witness was judged to be unreliable.Political Parties of the Caribbean, 1980s to 1990s
/ref> It contested one seat in the

1983 Jamaican general election Early general elections were held in Jamaica on 15 December 1983. Dieter Nohlen (2005) ''Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume I'', p430 The election was effectively ended as a contest when the main opposition party, the People's Nat ...

. The elections that year saw a mass boycott (turnout was just 2.7%) Dieter Nohlen (2005) ''Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume I'', p432–435 as the

protested against the government. The JUF received only 144 votes and failed to win a seat. It did not contest any further elections.

References

Defunct political parties in Jamaica {{Jamaica-stub