If anyone ever fitted the bill of “community activist” it would be Laura Moodie of Borgue.
And if there was one slogan which sums up the passionate campaigner it would be “power to the people”.
Over a coffee in the Galloway Lodge in Gatehouse it’s clear Laura likes nothing better than winning small victories for local communities.
And taking on authority – especially when she feels local people’s views on issues vital to their lives are being sidelined or belittled by government, local or national, operating under the misguided belief that they always know best.
Laura, 44, stepped down this summer from Borgue Community Council after a five-year stint as secretary and member.
She’s been a leading light of Haud the Bus, an ongoing campaign to improve local bus services, and campaigned – successfully as it turned out – to halt the renewal of peat extraction licences at two sites near Beattock and Moffat.
“It was agreed they should not be extended because they were not compatible with the council’s climate commitments,” she says.
Some of her work has been international in nature – she helped set up Dumfries-based charity Massive Outpouring of Love (MOOL) in response to the refugee crisis.
Others have been as local and grassroots as you can get – but no less important.
“We secured a play park in Borgue on land at the village hall and a skateboard park in Kirkcudbright,” she tells me.
“And we got new heating in the hall which has made a world of difference.
“The way I look at the world is that if there are things I am not happy about – rural depopulation for example – then there are certain skills I bring to the table to try and help tackle it.
“I can write a good funding application, I’m good at organisation, bringing people together, talking about difficult and complex ideas in a way that is interesting and understandable.
“I can use these skills to make a difference to my community.
“That’s all anybody can do really.”
The way the Moodie clan has grown in numbers over the years certainly seems well organised.
“We have four children – two boys and two girls aged six, nine, 12 and 15,” laughs Laura
“It’s a perfect family – it’s almost as if we meant it!”
After narrowly missing out on becoming an MSP, Laura currently works for Highlands and Islands Green MSP Ariane Burgess, her job time split between home and Holyrood.
It all seems a long way from Bradford, where she was born in 1978, the year before Margaret Thatcher came to power.
The years which followed were very difficult for parents as they tried to cope with British industry shutting down round about them.
“We moved around a lot when I was a kid,” Laura says.
“My dad, David Jones, was from Wrexham in Flintshire and my mum Gillian Scott as far as I know is just Yorkshire.
“We used to go on holiday to Rhyl and Llandudno to see aunts and uncles.
“Dad worked in manufacturing and worked his way up.
“To begin with he made big tanks and drums, then worked for Jaguar, Massey Ferguson and then a firm making corrugated metal roofing for agricultural buildings.
“But he would be no more than two years in a job. And each time he was made redundant he took Norman Tebbit’s advice – not through choice – to ‘get on your bike and find a job’.
“Sometimes by the time we got to a new place dad would be made redundant.
“Once we moved from Yorkshire to Derbyshire and found a house.
“But before the family bought it he had lost his job again.
“In Coventry he was at Massey Ferguson for two years, was paid off, went to Jaguar, then that job went too after a year.
“It wasn’t easy – my mum was practically a single parent and they both worked very hard to keep the difficult bits from us.”
The Jones’ itinerant existence finally settled when the family moved to West Lutton in the Great Wold Valley, between Malton and Scarborough.
“I lived there from when I was ten until 18,” Laura tells me.
“In was nice to be in a little village but before that we had only lived in cities.
“It was so remote it made Borgue look well connected!
“We were 12 miles from the nearest town and six miles from the nearest bus stop.
“It was a beautiful place to grow up in but it was a bit of a culture shock after Bradford and Coventry – the village only had around 300 people.
“I used to work in the local pub, the Star Inn in Weaverthorpe, two and a half miles down the road and four villages along.
“I was 14 when I started waitressing and cleaning bedrooms
“Once I had to clean the loos on Christmas morning.
“But I did get time and a half – a whole £3.75 an hour back in 1992.
“I used to go to great lengths to get out and about and went to sixth form college in York to do my A-levels.
“It meant a three-hour round trip every day – sometimes you would get snowed in on the way and I would stay with a friend.
“Once I had proved myself and the teachers became aware of how far I had to travel I could stay at home on Wednesdays to study.”
Was there a wild side to the young Laura Jones I wonder?
“Well, on Sundays I was still waitressing and I had to get there for 11am.
“One time me and a friend found out about a rave in Birmingham, at the Q Club.
“It was all night dancing and the DJ was Dave Angel.
“He did an album called This Film’s Crap Don’t Slash the Seats.
“We got a bus back to York at 3am – and I still made my shift at the pub.
“My mum went into a record shop to buy the album for me – she was mortified!”
Laura chose Edinburgh University for her history degree, she tells me, not purely for academic reasons.
“I wanted to get as far away from home as possible – and going over a border was quite nice,” she smiles.
“I really liked Scottish universities and their four-year degree course because you got a Masters instead of a Bachelors.
“But because I came from a background where people did not go to university I took a while to settle in.
“At my first tutorial the tutor asked what school everyone went to.
“I was the only one who went to a state school.
“To earn some money I worked in a pizza takeaway, as a charity fundraiser in a call centre and selling the Guardian on the street during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – a bit of everything really.”
Laura, I discover, also found time to help run the university’s unimaginatively titled campus publication, The Student.
Her features editor job was always going to be challenging at times but, she admits, getting threatened with legal action by an award-winning journalist and documentary maker was not in the job description.
“I nearly got sued by John Pilger,” chuckles Laura with a hint of devilment.
“One of my writers had written a piece on the Iraq war and was so pleased with it that he sent it to John Pilger who had been referenced in the article.
“But Mr Pilger did not like the reference and completely overreacted.
“He responded by saying he was going to sue the newspaper and specifically the features editor – who was me.
“I thought to myself Oh, come on!
“He rather lost his shine for me at that point.
“After all, the article was anti-war and we were supposed to be on the same side!”
Laura did land one “scoop” during her time with The Student – her future husband.
“I met Matthew there – he also worked on the newspaper and was sports editor,” she smiles.
“We were at uni together from 1996 to 2000 then he got a job in Birmingham.
“I said ‘I don’t think I’m ready for all this grown-upness’,
“But after a couple of months apart we knew we wanted to be together and I moved down to Birmingham.
“I lived there working for a publishing company for two years then in 2002 I came up with Matthew when he opened a publishing house in Glasgow.
“We both wanted to come back to Scotland – there was nothing wrong with Birmingham, we just preferred Scottish cities,
“I got a job with the BBC as a subtitler and we bought a one-bedroom flat in Glasgow’s Southside.
“That’s when I first started doing community activism and got involved with the Strathbungo Society.”
The group, it turns out, was formed in 1971 to protect and regenerate its architecturally important tenements and back lanes from developers, chief among those being the city council which wanted to build a motorway through the district.
The campaign succeeded and grassroots-inspired programme began to improve the area – work which, Laura tells me, she was keen to assist.
“I got involved with the heritage of the community which was really active,” she says.
“The society published a quarterly newsletter and staged big community events regularly.
“I edited the newsletter for a bit and there was several big issues.
“One was Network Rail who decided they would cut down all the trees along the railway. We held vigils and people chained themselves to trees.
“We got our own arboriculturalist in to do a survey and challenge the argument that the trees were dangerous.
“There was lots of local news coverage – and we won.
“It was just a money-saving exercise – they didn’t want to spend money maintaining the trees.
“Then Glasgow City Council decided to fill in old mine shafts and workings in the area because of the risk of subsidence.
“We worked with the community and council to make sure there was as little disruption as possible and that Strathbungo’s cobbled back lanes were reinstated and improved.”
Laura, I learn, also got involved in Glasgow Civic Forum, which brought together lots of groups interested in protecting the built heritage of the city through sharing campaigns and knowledge.
“We challenged unsympathetic upgrades to George Square and the use of the public realm for private events,” she says with a hint of defiant pride.
“And we stopped what was a very unpopular reimagining of the square in 2013.
“We also had a whole series of campaigns against closures of nurseries.
“I really got a taste for community activism and as the anthropologist Margaret Mead said – never doubt that a handful of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world.
“That’s the only thing that ever has.
“The more you get involved in community activism the more you realise that ordinary people have so much power – they only have to raise their voices.”
One would think it’s quite a leap from Strathbungo to Borgue – but when you ponder on how the Glasgow suburb was once a working rural community before being swallowed up in the metropolis perhaps it’s not such a jump after all.
“We moved to Borgue in 2013 when I was on maternity leave from my work with the BBC,” Laura smiles.
“Our second child was eight weeks old and the plan was that I would be able to work from home.
“But the BBC was not up for that and I never went back.
“Matt was working from home as a technical publisher and we had been increasingly looking at swapping city life for rural life.
“He was originally from Lochmaben so he’s a Dumfries and Galloway lad.
“So we said once we move back out to the countryside Dumfries and Galloway is the obvious choice.
“We decided on the Kirkcudbright area with the only proviso being it had to be a village where there was a school.
“It was just after the big snow in late March that year when we came down and found the house we wanted at Borgue.
“Borgue really is a special place.”
