Inverness community stalwart (74) awarded British Empire Medal reveals incident as18-year-old single mum sparked her activism
Dell McClurg recalls as an 18-year-old single mum she found herself living in a council home with boarded-up windows and a maggot-infested kitchen.
It was to be a pivotal experience for Dell who has been dubbed “a voice for the voiceless” and is a passionate advocate for her community in Inverness from campaigning for improved housing to saving the local school.
Having made a stand to get her housing issues resolved, she vowed no one should be treated in such a way.
For more than four decades, the 74-year-old has been a staunch defender of Merkinch and South Kessock - her dedication having recently been recognised with the award of British Empire Medal for services to wildlife and the community.
And yet she had an inauspicious start in life, spending her earliest months in a children’s home until arriving in the Highlands aged 16 months to be fostered and never knowing who her birth mother was - even to this day.
“I often think life deals you these things so you can get on with life and help other people,” she reflected.
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As we chat in a quiet corner of the well-used Merkinch Community Centre - which she and other locals saved from demolition in 2016 after forcing Highland Council to rethink controversial proposals - the lunch club has just finished.
Numerous waved greetings in Dell’s direction as its members leave are testament to her involvement in the local community where she lives with her partner, Sam Lyall, and where she raised five children.
She grew up in Beauly, having been fostered by Florence Bruce - the only mum she ever knew - and her husband, Peter, who fostered several children after their own eight children had grown up.
“Every time my mum got another foster baby, she went to the railway station,” Dell recalled.
“I thought all babies came from the railway station when I was I young!”
Although she later tried to find out more about her birth mother, she never succeeded as the local authority in Stirlingshire had lost her records and those of other children in care.
It was a happy childhood with much time spent outdoors, playing in the woods and paddling in the river while Sundays were a day for walking in the nearby hills and having a picnic.
“Mum would spot a ladybird or a ladybird and point them out,” Dell recalled. “It introduced me to nature.
“I don’t think you really appreciate your mum until you have kids of your own and realise what she has done.”
After leaving school and deciding she needed to stand on her own two feet, she went to Edinburgh but returned to Inverness and became a single mum aged 18.
She worked washing dishes in a hotel and cleaning offices and lived in private rented accommodation which she described as “pretty dire”.
Eventually, she was allocated a council property.
“It had no windows,” she said. “They were boarded up with chipboard.
“The toilet was filthy. The bath was full of washing which was covered in green mould.
“The cooker in the kitchen was covered in grease and maggots.”
She moved in but was still waiting three weeks later for the council to rectify the issues.
Instructed by her mum, she went to Inverness Town House and informed the sanitary inspector that her life was very limited as her windows were boarded up.
“The sanitary inspector came down and then went to his van and came back with yellow tape,” she recalled.
“He said he was condemning it and I started to cry.”
The inspector subsequently cleaned the bathroom himself and told Dell heads would roll for what had happened.
It was her first experience of taking a stand and kindled her community activism.
“After that, I swore that no one should be treated like this,” she said.
“I got it in my mind that although I was a single parent, I still had rights.”
Three years later, she moved into another council house in Craigton Avenue.
It was cold with a coal fire in the living room for heating.
“It had putty falling out of the windows so I used newspaper to keep out the rain and wind,” she said.
“All the corners of the beds had mildew.
“It was really bad and I wondered if mine was like this, what were the others like.”
With others, she started knocking on doors asking residents if they had any repairs they needed doing.
“We started gathering information and taking photos and collated the whole lot and went to the Town House,” she said.
It took five years to get the houses renovated but it was not to be the the end of campaigning for Dell.
As a member of Merkinch Community Council for 45 years, including 13 as chairperson, there have been many battles along the way from potholes to fly tipping although she constantly deflects attention from herself and credits others as well as citing collective stands by the community.
She outlined how Merkinch Primary School was saved, for example, after being threatened with closure and the council agreed to renovate it instead.
“It was the strength of the community,” Dell says. “They were prepared to fight it.”
Dell was also a key supporter in creating the Merkinch Local Nature Reserve, a popular place for walking, spotting wildlife and family outings.
She could see the potential of a community space and woodland along the shores of the Beauly Firth and was involved in a clear-up of rubbish and encouraging people of all ages, particularly young people, to join in tree-planting.
She also runs the small volunteer-run seasonal visitor centre at the nearby former ferry ticket office which provides information on the local area and wildlife.
“We’ve been running it for about 30 years now,” she said.
“We get people from all over the world. We’ve had people from Alaska.”
For 25 years, she was a project worker in Merkinch of Action for Children, a not-for-profit organisation which provides practical and emotional care and support to children and young people as well as campaigning to bring lasting improvements to their lives.
It was a role she loved, working with a broad range from teenagers to mums and toddlers.
After it closed, she became a creche worker at a multi-cultural project.
Dell believed there was still a strong sense of community in the area and cited a controversial plan in recent years to build homes on the nature reserve which was dropped following a storm of opposition.
She recalled 80 people turning up a public meeting.
“A lot of people spoke but I never said a word and I think that was really important,” said Dell who particularly recalled a young mum having her say.
“She was strong enough to stand up to the people in authority.”
