My father, Geoffrey Hemingway, who has died aged 91, was a conscientious objector during the second world war and devoted his life to practical action for peace.
He was born in the East End of London, son of an accounts clerk working for the Great Eastern Railway and a seamstress. Both his parents were keen Methodists. As a CO, Geoffrey joined the Friends (Quaker) Ambulance Unit and served first in Sicily, nursing patients with typhus, and then in Italy from 1942 until 1945. Work for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration allowed him to save the fees for university – not enough for medical school, where Dad wanted to go, but enough for the London School of Economics. After university, he worked for the Plunkett Foundation on community ownership in rural settings.
In 1953 he sailed to Kunsan, Korea, to join (and ultimately lead) a relief team organised by American and British Quakers. He rolled up his sleeves alongside Korean women, recently widowed in the war, who were building their own houses using rammed earth; some of the homes were still standing when he visited in 1997. But his main role in Korea was in hospital administration. He would often say that he was "amply rewarded" for his three years there, meeting an Irish midwife, Annie, whom he married.
Back in Britain, and living in Southend, Essex, he lectured at the Hammersmith and West London College and published a book, An Introduction to Business Finance (1976). Over the decades, he gave his time to different peace organisations, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and ensured that the Southend carnival had a peace float. In the 1980s he and Mum stayed twice at the anti-cruise-missile peace camp at RAF Molesworth, Cambridgeshire, and Dad took part in marches protesting against the Iraq war, which he viewed with horror. But the quiet, small activities were also important for Dad: every year he would collect for the United Nations Association at busy train stations, as well as knocking on the doors of our neighbours.
Dad is survived by Annie; three children, Sarah, Ruth and me; and two grandchildren, Stanley and Eade.