My mum was one of five close sisters. They would get together for every high day and holiday. I still have fond memories of these gatherings from my very early years.

As I grew older I became aware of a shadow hanging over these family parties. The elephant not in the room as it were, was the only boy child alongside those five girls. He was my mysterious uncle Edward who it seemed to me was never invited, never came and was rarely mentioned at these gatherings.

On the very few occasions his name did come up it was (if our editor will allow what some may think a racist epithet) as the black sheep of the family.

Slowly over the years I managed to patch his story together. In the war Edward had refused to fight. He was just one of the 63,000 conscientious objectors who like him refused to take up arms and my mother, her sisters and their parents never said much about what they thought of Edward. 

When they did say anything it seemed they were embarrassed by his stand against war.

When he refused to pick up a rifle he was arrested, taken before a panel and finally directed to work as a labourer on a farm. Edward would stay in farming for the rest of his life, finally retiring not as a farm labourer but as a very senior civil servant in the Ministry of Food, Farming and Fisheries.

As a conscientious objector Uncle Edward joined an impressive company that included many notable figures, some of whom would go on to achieve fame and fortune.

Among this widely diverse group were Barry Bucknell — the man who brought Do-It-Yourself to our TV screens; Malcolm Arnold — composer; Fenner Brockway — Labour MP; Sidney Carter — who wrote Lord of the Dance; GDH Cole — socialist writer; Alex Comfort — the physician who wrote Joy of Sex; Hans Coper — German born potter; David Hockney — painter; Denis Jenkinson motor racing journalist; John Maynard Keynes — economist; Rajani Palme Dutt — communist writer; Peter Pears — tenor; Paul Eddington — actor; Roland Penrose — typographer; EM Forster — novelist; Robin Page Arnot — communist; Benjamin Britten — composer; Guy Alfred — founder of the anarchist Bakunin Press; Geoffrey Bush — composer; my uncle Edward and thousands more.  

One of the most interesting groups of conscientious objectors set themselves up a small farming community in a quiet corner of Lincolnshire in the villages of Holton-cum-Beckering and Legsby.

Here a group of idealistic young women and men who had refused to fight and instead registered as conscientious objectors to set up a farming co-operative and training centre in rural Lincolnshire.

The community was made up of accountants, clerks, bookbinders, teachers, journalists and artists who arrived from all over the country.

Some were from wealthy backgrounds, but with no experience of working the land. The community had a lasting impact on the area, and a remarkable number of them and their descendants went on to achieve notable success and even fame in many fields.

The Lincolnshire community was always strongly involved in the arts so it’s appropriate that the story of this brave little band has been well documented by Lincolnshire playwright Ian Sharp who has turned many of the memories and anecdotes into a play called Remembrance.  

Sharpe managed to find many documents, letters and recordings of the objectors. He even interviewed and met some participants just before their deaths.

Sharpe put his play on at the Broadbent Theatre in Wickenby. The theatre is named after one of the co-founders of the community, Roy Broadbent, father of Oscar-winning actor Jim Broadbent.

Jim’s acting debut was as one of the children in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in an old prisoner-of-war Nissen hut where the community first put on its plays and other entertainments.

Another key member was Francis Cammaerts, a London teacher who in 1940 was refused registration as a conscientious objector by his local tribunal. It was granted on appeal conditional upon taking up agricultural work. He joined the Holton group as a shepherd.

However, after the death of his brother Pieter in the RAF he felt he could no longer stand aside, and, as a fluent French speaker, he went to fight the nazis alongside the French resistance working to bring communist and anti-communist groups together. Cammaerts’s nephew is the progressive writer and author of War Horse, Michael Morpurgo.

Architect Edmund Albarn spent much of the war as a pacifist in Nottingham, but joined the Holton community in 1948, keen to be among like-minded people.

His grandson, Damon Albarn, frontman of rock band Blur, told the BBC how he admired his grandfather’s bravery: “It took an enormous amount of courage. You were basically opting out of society and had no guarantee you were ever going to be allowed back in.”

The play, which took the form of a documentary drama, was performed by members of the local community, including descendants of the original pacifists, whose stories are told mainly in their own words.

At one performance there were over 50 people in the audience with family connections to original members of the community. 99-year-old Donald Sutherland was there.  

At 22 Sutherland abandoned his job in insurance to join the community after being granted an unconditional exemption, because of his Christian beliefs. He hopes to take part in one of the Edinburgh performances making him the oldest person ever to perform at the Festival.

The Lincolnshire pacifist community grew out of a chance meeting at the Peace Pledge Union between Roy Broadbent, an architecture student whose father owned a large engineering firm in Huddersfield, and Dick Cornwallis, an Oxford graduate and accountant whose father was British ambassador to Iraq. Both were conscientious objectors, both had been disowned by their fathers.

They wanted to do something practical, so they set up a scheme to train other conscientious objectors in agriculture and in so doing build a community based on co-operation and communal interest.

Local farmer John Brocklesby agreed to lease them one of his rundown farms, Collow Abbey Farm, and to give some basic training. New trainees, most in their late teens and early 20s, started arriving on bikes.

The good news is that author Sharp has now completely rewritten and updated his play changing the title from Remembrance to Conchies. He is taking it to the Edinburgh festival. It will be performed by the Lincoln based theatre company A Certain Demographic at Venue 40 on August 13-18.

If you are in reach of Lincoln there are two pre-Edinburgh performances on August 5 and 8 at the Broadbent Theatre in Wickenby (pictured).

Of course that struggle for peace and against the waste of war continues organisations like Conscience, Taxes for Peace Not War fronted by actor Mark Rylance are keeping the spirit of those Lincolnshire Conchies and my uncle Edward alive.

Here is a special note for friends of the Morning Star. One of the actors in the show is Bonny Ambrose, widow of long-time Star Journalist Mike Ambrose.

More details and tickets are available from Broadbent Theatre: broadbenttheatre.org/book-tickets/ Tel: 0300 400 0101 Or for Edinburgh Fringe Venue 40: tickets.edfringe.com. Tel (0131) 266-0000