Danny Lennon recalls his experience of YCW from 1940-1952

Danny Lennon, right, with Willie Roberts of Wexford, 1940

« To understand the impact of the YCW on the lives of us young workers of the thirties it is important to consider the conditions we lived in. Most of us left school at 14 and went out hunting a job, any job! Many like myself, at 13, worked every holiday, Christmas and Easter. There was poverty and not many parents had the money to send their children to secondary school, so it was out to earn a few bob. (for you young ones a bob was a shilling in old money: 5p). The work was hard, the wages low and the conditions were often very bad. Along came the Young Christian Workers, can you imagine the impact it had on such a background?

The YCW made me! The vacuum that was there was filled. There after I ate, slept and drank YCW. Work was only a means to an end. Life took on a whole different meaning. A thought comes to mind, was there a life after work? For my father's generation there wasn't. If you think we had it bad they had it even worse. Everything was relative I suppose but we had to survive and with the help of the YCW we did, perhaps even better than most. God was good. (I say that in all sincerity, I'm still here!)

One of the problems of the early YCW here was recruiting enough of the ordinary worker types. Office workers, shop workers and civil servants, that type of worker was easy enough but mill workers, labourers etc. were much more difficult to contact as many Young Christian Workers were not in direct contact with this kind of worker. Another problem for us at that time was "Clerical Opposition", some thought we were too militant, imagine!

YCW was a Godsend, it was the making of us! »