My father, Don Sutherland, who has died aged 103, was a pacifist and Quaker who, at 22, left his insurance job to join a small farming community of conscientious objectors, known as “conchies”, during the second world war. He was the last surviving member of the group.
Along with Roy Broadbent, father of the actor Jim Broadbent, he was part of the conchie community at Holton cum Beckering and later at Bleasby, in Lincolnshire. When Ian Sharp’s play Conchies, about these pacifist communities, opened in 2017 at the Broadbent theatre in nearby Wickenby, Don made a cameo appearance and took part on tour, including at the Edinburgh festival fringe in 2018.
