Breaking the Dead Silence

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Visiting Research Fellow aims to 'Break the Dead Silence’ with new book

This year’s theme for Black History Month, observed every October in the UK, is ‘Reclaiming Narratives.’ Dr Richard White, walking artist and Visiting Research Fellow at BSU, has co-authored and edited a new book seeking to do just that. 

Breaking the Dead Silence: Engaging with the Legacies of Empire and Slave-Ownership in Bath and Bristol’s Memoryscapes – co-edited by Richard with Dr Christina Horvath from the University of Bath – is a collection of diverse voices reflecting on the aftermath of the toppling of Bristol’s Colston statue, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the subsequent heritage ‘culture wars’. 

Providing a range of critical commentaries, personal accounts and reflections on the heritage story of Bristol and Bath, Breaking the Dead Silence includes perspectives from academics, artists, activists, heritage professionals, and tourist guides. 

The murder of George Floyd in 2020, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol gave a new impetus to long overdue discussions on memorialisation, white privilege, social justice, and repair. Through their work, the authors hope to continue the momentum created by these events, adding to discussions about social justice, racism, and accountability. 

The book’s title draws on Jane Austen’s famous description in her novel Mansfield Park of how a conversation on slavery was closed down in a ‘dead silence’. A silence, the authors argue, largely held in Bath until the 2020 toppling of the Colston statue in Bristol. 

Talking about the need to break this silence, Richard said:  

“If we don’t acknowledge Bristol and Bath’s links to slavery and talk about them, it allows racism to grow. It’s permissive of intolerance. It just seeps in. If you don’t talk about it, it grows.” 

He continued: 

“Stories of colonial exploitation, forced migration and looting are hidden in plain sight. From Bath’s UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site and the old port of Bristol to the coastal cities of the UK and beyond, public sites of memory have yet to fully acknowledge the atrocities committed in the creation of the wealth they manifest.” 

Much of Bath’s Georgian development was underpinned by wealth accumulated from the transatlantic slave trade. Bristol was a key port in the trade network between Britain, West Africa, and the Caribbean, but the authors say Bath has yet to fully acknowledge the sources of its 18th and 19th century wealth. 

Richard’s work as a walking artist-researcher often explores history though untold or obscured stories, with a look towards social justice.  

Explaining further, Richard said: 

“It is my view that to be part of the constructed amnesia and the forgetting of injustice is to become complicit in its persistence. Racism and its inverse – white supremacism – became structural through the transatlantic trade and European colonialism. My view, as a white man, is that without reaching back to and owning that past we remain shackled to it. Making a way, walking and asking questions, I attend to complicity and white privilege; I seek to become more alert.” 

Incorporating his work, Richard recently led a ‘walking launch’ for Breaking the Dead Silence at BSU’s Newton Park campus as part of Heritage Open Days in September. 

A launch event for Breaking the Dead Silence will be held in Bath at Widcombe Social Club on Tuesday 15 October, and in Bristol on Wednesday 16 October at M Shed, with a walk planned in the afternoon, and a Q&A event in the evening. The Belonging Network is also hosting an event at Toppings Bookshop in Bath on Sunday 20 October. 

Breaking the Dead Silence is available for purchase, or as a free pdf download, on the Liverpool University Press website.

Image credit: Keir Gravil/Reuters