Barnaby Kemp Graham Miln (born 6 August 1947) is a British social activist and former magistrate. He was the first lay person to come out as gay in the General Synod of the Church of England and thereby the most publicly gay magistrate in England and Wales.Daily Telegraph, London, Tuesday 9 February 1988, page 8.The Independent newspaper, London, Friday 4 December 1992, page 3 with photograph The Independent newspaper, London, Saturday 5 December 1992, page 3 Sunday Press newspaper, Dublin, 3 January 1993, page 3 with photographs.
Family background The Miln family originates from Barry Mill, since 1988 the property of the National Trust for Scotland, in Barry, a village near Carnoustie in Angus in Scotland. The Miln genealogy back to 1614 is recorded in Burke's Landed Gentry.Burke's Landed Gentry of Great Britain, 19th edition, Volume 1, page 1021, Barnaby Miln's coat of arms Letters Patent were granted on 7th August 1967 and matriculated at the Court of the Lord Lyon King of Arms on 8 August 1967,James Balfour Paul, An Ordinary of Arms Contained in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland. 2nd edition, Lyon Office, Edinburgh, 1977, and re-matriculated on 12 October 1998, after the death of his father, Captain William Wallace Graham Miln (1919 - 1994) 1st Battalion, The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) 1939–1946.Captain William Wallace Graham Miln (1919 - 1994) 1st Battalion, The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) 1939-1946.
Early life and education Miln was educated at Mostyn House School, once a prestigious preparatory boarding schoolThe Rise of the English Prep School by Donald Leinster-Mackay, Falmer Press Ltd, 1984, for 160 boys from 8 to 13 years, in Parkgate on the Wirral Peninsula in Cheshire, where his end of term reports show that he was happy, an all-rounder and clever. This was followed by Loretto School, Musselburgh, close to Edinburgh, the smallest of the great public schoolsThe Public School Phenomenon, Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, Hodder and Stoughton, 1977, page 441. with 240 boys with a reputation for being spartan, sporty and very strict.Dymock, Eric. Jim Clark: Racing Legend. London: J.H. Haynes & Co. Ltd., 1997. . pages 54 to 60. After a year as farm student with Tommy Dale,The Scotsman, Edinburgh, 6 September 1988, obituary. of ScoughallThe Scots Magazine, Dundee, Vol 88, No 6, March 1968, pages 530-539. in East Lothian, he was the third generation of his family to be a graduate of the Edinburgh School of Agriculture. He was elected a member of the Edinburgh University students' representative council and was present and on duty when the rector, Malcolm Muggeridge, used a sermon at St. Giles' Cathedral in January 1968,Thorns and Thistles, Dr Harry Whitley, Edina Press Limited, Edinburgh, p 15, to resign his post in protest against the council's liberal views on "pot and pills."
Seedsman and plant breeder His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were each in their time managing director of the largest agricultural plant breeding and seed company in the United Kingdom,Financial Times newspaper, London, 19 August 1983. Gartons Agricultural Plant Breeders plc. Barnaby Miln was the elder son of the fourth generation and went on to professional seed and plant breeding training firstly with the family firm, then in Minneapolis, USA, with Northrup-King & Co, at the time the world's largest seed company, and at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany, Cambridge. Just as he was a fully qualified seedsman and plant breeder the family business was taken over.
Whilst with Gartons plc he was a co-breeder and responsible for the final selection of the first wheat variety to apply for, in 1965, and be granted Plant breeders' rights in the United Kingdom, Gartons Apex Wheat.Plant Varieties & Seeds Gazette, HMSO, London, Number 3, May 1965.
Whilst with Northrup-King & Co he originated their sugar beet breeding programme, managed their turf grass trials ground, and studied seed vigour at their Minneapolis and Eden Prairie seed agronomy research centres.
In 1973 he set up his own agricultural seed company in Herefordshire, UK, Milns of Bodenham Limited, later adding two garden centres and a turf grass research facility - where he invented the patented processPatent International Application Number PCT/GB96/01410, filing date 17 June 1996. Title: Seed Germination and Sowing. of seed lamination in 1980. Years later, working near Edinburgh, he developed the process and won the Scotland on Sunday/KPMG Award for Innovation in October 1995.Scotland on Sunday newspaper, Glasgow, 22 October 1995, page 5. In January 1996 he was the Scotland on Sunday/KPMG Scotland's Innovator of Promise.Scotland on Sunday newspaper, Glasgow, 7 January 1996, page 5.
Christian Aid Working as Christian Aid's horticultural consultant he devised their show gardenExpress newspaper. London, Saturday 26 April 1997, page 69. in 1997 which won a Royal Horticultural Society's Silver Gilt Medal (Flora range), the highest medal awarded at that show. The planting theme was Robert Fortune, the plant hunter, who had introduced the tea plant from China to India. Fairtrade and especially Clipper Fairtrade tea from Beaminster was featured. A number of television programmes highlighted the show garden including a BBC Songs of Praise with The Princess Royal being shown the plants by Barnaby Miln.
Fairtrade Fortnight As a Christian Aid consultant Barnaby Miln set up the first Fairtrade fortnight. This was held initially throughout Scotland. It was launchedHerald newspaper, Glasgow, 13 February 1997. in Edinburgh by Lady Marion Fraser LT on 12 February 1997 and held from 1 to 14 March 1997 when supporters of development charities like Christian Aid and Oxfam demanded their local supermarket stock fairtrade products. Later that year he spearheaded the fairtrade exhibitionEdinburgh Evening News newspaper, Tuesday, 23 October 1997. at the Commonwealth Conference in Edinburgh.
Plant varieties and family historian
Miln is a descendant of Robert Fortune,Extract of Matriculation of the Arms of Barnaby Miln. Lyon Court, 1998. and as a plant variety historian, he has researched the more than two hundred garden plants he introduced to the United Kingdom from China.National Trust for Scotland, D Donald, Head of Horticulture in 1997.Robert Fortune A Plant Hunter in the Orient. Alistair Watt. Pages 224, 293 (photo), 295, 378, 379, 380, 382, 383, 394 and 412. Kew Publishing, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2017. ISBN 978 1 84246 619 3 He has also researched the almost two hundred varieties of new crop plants bred and introduced to United Kingdom agriculture by his family's business, Gartons Agricultural Plant Breeders plc.
Elderly care For ten years starting in 1981, Miln and his life partner created and built up Hereford's first residential care home for the elderly. The care home initially housed four people, but eventually rose to twenty four residents.Care Weekly magazine, London, 2 March 1990, page 5.
After this time, Miln was then Bursar of the City of Westminster's residential care homes for the elderly.
Career as a magistrate Whilst still in his late twenties but already a local councillorHereford Times newspaper, 21 May 1976, Election result. and churchwardenLugg Valley Parish Magazine, May 1976, Appointment. his name was submitted to be a Justice of the Peace.Hereford Times newspaper, 22 December 1978. For thirteen years he sat on the City of Hereford magistrates' bench and then for three years the City of London bench.
Chairing a court in 1985 he had dealt with a case involving a burglar he sent to prison who responded by saying that as he had AIDS, an illness then almost unknown in Hereford, he was being given a death sentence "I know I could be dead within 18 months to two years and that is the worst punishment I could ever have."Hereford Evening News newspaper, Tuesday 3 December 1985, page 3. In 1992 he became a Freeman of the City of London but not long afterwards Miln stepped down from the bench.
Church of England Barnaby Miln chaired the steering group during the building of a new church, St Barnabas, Hereford, and chaired its committee from its dedication by the Bishop of Hereford on 9 December 1981Hereford Evening News newspaper, Hereford, Thursday 10 December 1981, page 1. and its consecration on 16 July 1982 by the Bishop of Hereford in the presence of The Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon.Hereford Evening News newspaper, Hereford, Saturday 17 July 1982, page 1.
He was a governor of the Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School, Hereford, between 1983 and 1989 and was present in Hereford Cathedral when it joined the List of Woodard Schools.
In 1985 he was elected for five years to the General Synod of the Church of England after several years as chairman of the Diocese of Hereford's revenue committee and honorary treasurerHereford Diocesan Year Book, 1985. of the diocese, founded in AD 676.Hereford Times newspaper, 14 November 1985.
Christian Action on AIDS
Shortly after the court case of the man with AIDS, Miln was in London attending his first group of sessions of the General Synod. He introduced himself to Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, and asked what the church was doing about AIDS. The Archbishop had just returned from San Francisco and seen for himself the devastation caused to the gay community there. They agreed to work together with the Archbishop hoping that "AIDS would not be like cancer - a word only whispered, for by the church talking opening and honestly about AIDS we can take a lead in pastoral care and education".The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie, speech in the debate of AIDS at the General Synod, 10 November 1997. Report of Proceedings, General Synod, Volume 18, Number 3.
Conferences were held in the spring of 1986 in California and London when the rainbow AIDS Awareness ribbon was first distributed and became the international symbol of support for people with AIDS for the next five years. A charity, Christian Action on AIDS, was set up on 14 July 1986,The Guardian newspaper, London, Monday 14 July 1986. supported by church leaders and with Canon John Bowker, Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, as its president and Barnaby Miln as its chairman.The Times newspaper, London, Saturday 20 September 1986, Court and Social page.
Christian Action on AIDS was responsible for the working papers on AIDS for the 1988 Lambeth Conference. Once the three-week-long Conference was under way the Archbishop of Canterbury asked Miln to gather support for a last-minute resolution on homosexuality 'to hold the position reached in 1978'The Report of the Lambeth Conference 1978, CIO Publishing London, pages 41 and 64, in the name of the Bishop of New York, Paul Moore. Resolution 64Lambeth Conference Reports 1988, Church House Publishing, London, page 237, called on all bishops of the Anglican Communion to undertake in the next decade a 'deep and dispassionate study of the question of homosexuality'. This was cited in his Preface by the next Archbishop, Dr George Carey, as a reason for the publication in December 1991 of a Statement by the House of Bishops of the General Synod of the Church of England, Issues in Human Sexuality.Issues in Human Sexuality, Church House Publishing, London, December 1991 Whilst continuing to forbid gay sex for the clergy it gave a permission for laity.Issues in Human Sexuality, page 41, para 5.6.