The Ink Briefing: Reminding the world that Swindon is a beacon for those fleeing evil
The Ink Briefing Wednesday 20 September
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Swindon will soon officially be what it has already been to generations - a place of sanctuary
Early this evening, Swindon Borough Council’s Cabinet will be asked to agree that Swindon should become a Borough of Sanctuary. Members will be asked to give the formal go-ahead to Swindon joining “…a network of cities and towns which promote the inclusion and welfare of people who are fleeing violence and persecution in their own countries.” The Director of Housing, if members agree, will be authorised to work with the national City of Sanctuary Movement and local voluntary and statutory groups to obtain the City of Sanctuary Award.
By Barrie Hudson
A report handed to council Cabinet members ahead of their meeting later today notes: “Swindon, as a community, has been responding to the urgent needs of migrants fleeing their home country due to violence and persecution for decades.”
Anybody who doubts this should brush up on their Swindon history. If we consider recent decades alone, it is difficult to pinpoint any international humanitarian crisis which has not prompted, to a greater or lesser degree, the town and surrounding area extending the hand of welcome and comfort to those displaced by despotism, disaster and war.
Anybody who searches for long enough among historic photographs of our station and closest airfields will sooner or later uncover images of recently-arrived men, women and children, their eyes windows on traumas most people could not imagine, hoping that the future would at least bring no more horror or extreme uncertainty.
Going further back in history, to the years after a certain Isambard Kingdom Brunel decided that a small market town called Swindon was ideally placed to be a hub of his new railway operation, the town offered work, decent housing, dignity and decent healthcare to people from throughout the country. There was hard and well-paid work, but no dark, Satanic mills.
In the years after World War Two, Swindon’s new housing estates cradled the hopes and ambitions of people fleeing filthy cities and overcrowded, ramshackle homes which should have been condemned decades earlier.