Sir Kenneth Blackburne

Sir Kenneth Blackburne (born December 12, 1907, Bordon Camp, Hampshire, England—died November 4, 1980, Douglas, Isle of Man) British colonial administrator and postindependence leader of Jamaica.

The son of an Anglican curate, Blackburne was educated at Marlborough College and at Clare College, Cambridge, where he received an honours degree in modern languages and geography. He then joined the British Colonial Service and began an administrative career, serving in a variety of posts in Britain’s colonies—Nigeria (1930–35), Palestine (1935–38), The Gambia (1941–43), and the West Indies (1943–47)—with interspersed periods of service in positions of increasing responsibility at the Colonial Office in London. In 1950–56 he served as governor of the Leeward Islands, and in 1957 he was transferred to govern the British colony of Jamaica, which was to be his final post before his retirement.

Blackburne governed during a period of political disharmony in Jamaica and one in which Great Britain saw increasing numbers of Jamaican immigrants to its shores. The country was also making its final journey to political independence, which it achieved on August 6, 1962. Blackburne was sworn in that day as independent Jamaica’s first governor-general, having agreed to stay on for a transitional period of several months. He remained in that role until November 30, when he left the Colonial Service and returned to England. He was succeeded as governor-general by Sir Clifford Clarence Campbell, the first native-born Jamaican to serve in that post.

Blackburne published a memoir, Lasting Legacy: A Story of British Colonialism (1976), as well as a guidebook, Nelson’s Dockyard, English Harbour: A Guide (1951; subsequent editions published as The Romance of English Harbour). He was knighted in 1952.