David Miller was one of that remarkable generation of debaters at Glasgow University in the 1960s which included Labour supporters John Smith and Donald Dewar - best man at David Miller's wedding - and Tories Brian (now Lord) Gill and Anna McCurley.
David Miller was a Liberal. He chaired the Glasgow University Liberals in 1961, between the chairmanships of John Mackay, later the Tory minister Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, and Menzies Campbell, now MP for East Fife and the Liberal Party's Defence spokesman. In 1967, Miller stood as the Liberal candidate in a by-election in Pollok, hardly, as it turned out, fertile ground for the Liberal cause.
He was a very popularly elected member of the board of the university union, and throughout his student days a loyal member of the university's Christian community, devoting a lot of time to the chaplaincy centre and to its inspirational but errant chaplain, David Gourlay.
David Miller was educated at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh, and graduated with an honours degree in economics from the University of Glasgow in 1962. Not without some misgivings, he started out on a divinity course at Trinity College. However, when early the following year he was invited to undertake an English Speaking Union debating tour of the United States, and the Senate of Trinity College decided he should remain and continue his studies, Miller shook the uncomfortable dust of Trinity College from his feet, undertook the debating tour, and started work with the International Publishing Company (IPC) and Sir Geoffrey (later Lord) Crowther.
He was an enthusiastic, successful, and determined marketing manager, but the high-powered, high life of the 1960s and '70s marketing world could not entirely erase the social conscience and religious faith which had led him to his deeply personal struggle with what he thought was a call to the Church of Scotland ministry. While in London he continued to express his religious commitment as a member of the Kirk Session of Crown Court Church in London, typically avoiding what he regarded as the somewhat effete life of Scotland's more fashionable church in Pont Street.
In the mid-1970s he abandoned his marketing career and returned to Scotland. He became the Church of Scotland's director of communications for a short time but found the innate conservatism and resistance to change of the Kirk's headquarters intensely demoralising. He wanted to bring about change in the Kirk's administration, and believed that was why he had been appointed. However, he soon found himself frustrated and at odds with the bureaucratic culture and departmental defensiveness of the Kirk's headquarters. When the opportunity arose in 1976 for him to become general secretary of the Scottish Liberal Party, he immediately accepted it.
He was to remain as the Scottish Liberals' secretary until 1988, during which time he regularly appeared on television either during elections or during negotiations between the Liberals and the SDP. He was awarded an OBE for his services to the party. During his years in the Liberal Party offices he was also session clerk of the Parish Church of St Andrew and St George in Edinburgh, working closely with the then minister Andrew Wyllie and taking on a lot of responsibility for the refurbishment of the George Street church in the 1980s. From 1985 until 1988 he was also secretary of the Assembly Council, a body which many had hoped would have the authority to push through changes in the Church of Scotland's structure, and for which David Miller had high but disappointed hopes.
In 1988, Miller eventually took the plunge and started a shortened course in preparation for the ministry of the Church of Scotland and, after an assistantship in St Ninian's, Corstorphine, he was appointed the associate minister of Fairmilehead in Edinburgh in 1992. This was a job for which David Miller's tact, gentle persuasiveness, and political skills were ideal in the resolving of underlying parish tensions. His pastoral responsibilities were beautifully performed in Fairmilehead. He retired in 1999 but continued to exercise an extremely valuable ministry as a chaplain at Saughton Prison and also assisting in St Margaret's Church in Edinburgh. From letters sent to him by prisoners in Saughton and parishioners in St Margaret's once it became known that he was suffering from lung cancer, it was obvious that his work had had a real impact on lives.
During his years at Fairmilehead, David Miller was a member of the Kirk's Church and Nation Committee, serving on its economic and industrial committee under the convenership of his fellow Liberal, now minister for Rural Affairs in the Scottish Executive, Ross Finnie.
David Miller was an intensely modest man who meant far more to people than he realised. He inspired an affection which would have surprised him, had he not discovered in these past few weeks of terminal illness how many people, many of them close friends but many more those he might have been tempted to think of as just casual acquaintances, were as upset by his illness as they were moved by his courage, cheerfulness, and faith.
David is survived by his wife, Deborah, whom he married in 1976, and their very gifted son Calum. His cousin, John Miller, with whom he stayed in Castlemilk when he returned to Scotland from London in 1976, was moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 2001.
Rev Ian David Miller,
born March 10, 1937;
died July 17, 2002.
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