YMCA after the second world war -Anniversary Review Part 8

After the second world war, as in 1918, the YMCA helped restore normality after the chaos. As well as organizing trips to war graves abroad for bereaved, the relatives, the association also established hostels for refugees from Germany, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia.

The British YMCA helped 20,000 of these “European Volunteer Workers,” settle in Britain, Giving them a home while they worked in industry and farming.

Afterlife settles into a peacetime routine, this most recent period in YMCA history has seen ventures to inject Christianity into the industry, a rapidly expanding and changing hostel programme, and a concentration on youth work, health and fitness, and training.

Soon after the war ended, a whole new programme of work, focused on bringing Christian values into business and industry, began.

The programme - based at residential centers at Kingsgate in Kent, Cheshunt College at Cambridge, Rhoose Youth College in Wales and Dunford House Sussex -  aimed to provide a moral framework for people in the industry and give them a wider view of the world outside work - of current affairs, philosophy and the arts.

Alan Onions, a fitter in Kent coal mine, described the challenge which the course at Kingsgate posed for him: “ Shall we continue to drift into a materialistic outlook on life, or shall we take up the challenge that the spiritual is at least as important as the material, both in social and industrial life?”

From 1958 onwards the same aims were followed in a quite different scheme - for young apprentices in their first six to 12 months at work. The Youth in Industry scheme began in YMCA hostels, with group discussions to offer support to young workers. It quickly expanded into companies, where apprentices met in small groups with a YMCA secretary for about an hour a week, to discuss everything from crime and relationships to the existence of God.

The work of the YMCA in this period was focusing increasingly on teenagers. A whole new idea of the youth, as distinct from the adult or child, had burst forth in the fifties with rock ‘n’ roll ,teddy boys and coffee bar culture.

The Beatles

The Albemarle Report of 1959 recognised the need for all young people aged between 14 and 20 in Britain to have access to youth facilities and this resulted in more Government grants for youth work. More and more YMCA youth groups sprang up with Government funding and, particularly in the 60s, local YMCAs were striving, and often succeeding, to combine traditional religious and educational activities with a new trendy approach.

In the early 60s YMCA Radio Barnsley, a hospital radio station run by members, was interviewing the Beatels and the Rolling Stones, Halifax YMCA was running a completition to find the best teenage D?J? and Bournemouth YMCA has a thriving jazz club. Some YMCAs ran a Sunday evening youth club combining pop music  with discussions on Christianity and many were opening coffee bars in their buildings as a meeting place for teenagers.

There were also attempts within the YMCA to confront the emerging problem of "juvenile delinuency". By 1965 George Reynolds, secretary of Woolwich YMCA, was pioneering a "gangs club" to attempt to involve teenage street gangs in the work of the YMCA and had written a book about his experiences.

The Rolling Stones

During the post - war period outdoor pursuits began to be recognised as a valid part of YMCA sctivities for young people. Lakeside, on the shores of Lake Windermere in Cumbria, which had been a YMCA campsite in the 1930s, had a building erected in 1952, and rapidly expanded its work to offer outdoor holidays to schools groups and boys from the Youth in Idustry programme.

Taken from the 150th Anniversary Review