Exeter: City of welcome, city of diversity

I was born in Exeter in 1955.  In the next bed to my mother was a Sikh woman who had also given birth to a son.  Her family had come to Exeter in 1947, mine probably in the 1500’s.  Both of us male babies were native Exonians.

In reality, we are all either migrants or the descendants of migrants.  Many of us have ancestors who fled places of oppression, or violence or death.  The only difference is that some of us arrived in the UK at an earlier time. and in smaller or greater numbers than others.  Otherwise we are all human beings and our history should not give us preference or priority over others.  Everyone shares in a common humanity and lives in a common home – planet Earth.

So all the fear-full talk of immigrants and refugees is frequently misplaced.  We erect all kinds of boundaries to determine the communities we need – families, tribes, neighbourhoods, workplaces, interest groups, campaigns, congregations and countries.  We require such connectivity to give us identity and purpose.  But we should not change boundaries into barriers.  It is not healthy to totally surround ourselves with those who are exactly as we are – we need diversity and variety to grow.  The alternative is fossilisation or sterility.  Community life works best when it can expand and contract, welcoming in the new and occasionally saying farewell to the old. That is how culture develops – the expansion of ideas, customs and activities.

Exeter, as with most English cities has experienced a wealthy and diverse history.  Over hundreds of generations our city has received distinct social groups of Huguenots, Jews, Poles, Africans, Chinese, Indians, Americans and many others.  Nine hundred years ago there were at least five languages spoken locally – none of which we would understand today.  Even before Caesar’s legions were here the city had a pre-Roman name and communities of Celtic tribes’ people.  And before the Celts there were others who had migrated here from other unnamed lands over thousands of years.

The title of the city has undergone different transformations, according to who was in Exeter at the time. On the same piece of igneous rock above the river Exe its inhabitants have lived in Caerwysg, Isca Dumnoniorum, Cair Pensa vel Coyt, Escanceaster, Exonia, Excester.

We may love our traditions but we should remember that there are always traditions before our own. Often we simply take comfort in the familiarity of what we were brought up with, totally regardless of what happened in previous generations.

So let’s be honest to our past when determining the future.  I remember 4,000 Ugandan Asians coming to Devon in the 1970s.  Then we received Vietnamese boat people. We welcomed them for a while, and Exeter was enriched by their presence.  Who knows what gifts Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis will continue to bring in the future?

It is time to be as open in our hearts and with our own borders as we expected others to be when we as Brits were travellers, migrants and settlers in earlier times….

Martyn Goss, Diocese of Exeter