By Philip Bradfield

Copyright newsletter

Over 1,200 people posted tributes to Mr Milne after his business announced his sudden death at his Banbridge home on Sunday – many describing him as “an absolute gentleman”. Among those who paid tribute were Upper Bann DUP MP Carla Lockhart and Deputy First Minister Emma Little Pengelly. Retired Church of Ireland Archbishop Alan Harper led a service of thanksgiving for Mr Milne in Holy Trinity Church, Banbridge on Friday, where he described him as a man who was always willing to “take on a scrap”. By turns a soldier, policeman, prison officer, and funeral director, he said Ian had also been “a risk taker because he was prepared to do what few others were prepared to do: the quiet, confidential but risky work of being a peace maker.” His biography, published five years ago, ‘A matter of Life and Death’, told how Ian came “agonizingly close” to securing a peace deal between both sides in the Drumcree parading dispute. Mr Harper noted that Ian’s son Andrew wrote an affectionate epilogue for the book, entitled: “My father – a daily adventure into the unknown”. The cleric said: “I retain the highest regard for all that undertakers do, and for the care, respect, sensitivity and expertise with which they do them. “No one embodied that care, respect, sensitivity and expertise more than did Ian Milne – I can say this with conviction by drawing on my own direct personal experience.” In the foreword to Ivan Little’s biography, South African lawyer and mediator Brian Currin said Ian “exemplifies the values and characteristics essential to build a united Northern Ireland” and had the courage to “engage with the ‘enemy’ in good faith”. Rev Harper added that Ian’s portrait was also one of 35 in an exhibition on “quiet peacemakers” in the Long Gallery at Stormont in 2014. Mr Currin returned home to South Africa in 2000 but Ian “soldiered on as one of the relatively small body of committed peace makers,” he added. “There was always a restless energy about Ian Milne, he was always willing to take up a cause or take on a scrap,” he added. Among other challenges he embraced were taking on the banks on behalf of small business during the banking crisis of 2008/9 and advancing the case for regulation of professional standards in the funeral sector. He noted that Ian was a passionate motorbike racing fan and sponsor and a keen supporter of Glenavon and Portadown football clubs. Quoting the words of St Paul, he said that believers after death will “in Christ, inhabit no longer an insubstantial tent but a solid new reality”. He added: “The earthy and the earthly is not the end of the human story, of my story, your story, or Ian’s story.” To borrow a Churchillian phrase, he said it is rather “the end of our beginning”. Mr Harper’s final words were to Ian’s extended family, including his former wife Valerie, their children Stewart, Rebecca and Andrew, and Ian’s fiancé Susan. “You should be in no doubt of the respect, admiration and love he had for each of you,” he said.