Timeline part 9 (1986-1989)
7 February: The Haitian president Jean-Claude Duvalier flees to France.
Cricket (selected writings, ed. Anna Grimshaw). London: Allison & Busby; distributed in the USA by Schocken Books (1986).
C.L.R. was awarded the Trinity Cross, the highest distinction in Trinidad.
The Black Jacobins (play) produced by Yvonne Brewster of the Talawa Theatre Company at Riverside Studios, London.
19 April: Tens of thousands of Chinese students take over Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in rally for democracy
Death: 19th May, 1989 (aged 88) – his body is buried in Tunapuna, Trinidad.
His tombstone is designed as a book, opened to a page inscribed with one of the most memorable passages from Beyond a Boundary:
“Times would pass, old empires would fall and new ones take their place, the relations of countries and the relations of classes had to change, before I discovered that it is not the quality of goods and utility which matters, but movement; not where you are or what you have, but where you have come from, where you are going, and the rate at which you are getting there.”
At the time of his death James had been working on a new edition of ‘World Revolution 1917-1936’ with London-based group ‘Socialist Platform’.
14 August: P. W. Botha quits as South Africa’s president.
11 November: After 28 years, the Berlin Wall is open to the West.