Out Of The Silence: Stories Of The Conscientious Objectors

The Matlock Storytelling Cafe presents Simon Heywood and Shonaleigh Cumbers with their brilliantly moving show Out of the Silence: Stories of the Conscientious Objectors.

In 1916, as soldiers died and volunteers grew scarce, the British government began the first ever mass conscription of its own citizens. Of millions called up, sixteen thousand claimed the new right to conscientious objection, so many that the state didn’t know what to do with them.

As their world collapsed, the “conchies” embarked on a long, lonely and silent war against war itself. They suffered ridicule, torture and imprisonment, their stand splitting families and communities. Drawing on first-hand accounts, letters, diaries and memoirs, storyteller and former peaceworker Simon Heywood and drut’syla (Yiddish storyteller) Shonaleigh bring the voices of these conscientious objectors out of the silence.