For our next webinar on 14 April, historian Dr Val Noone presents his recent book, “Melbourne YCW Origins 1941” exploring the beginnings of the Young Christian Workers in that city.

Drawing on personal experience and academic research, Val Noone highlights the “minor but important role in the social and religious life of Australia” that the YCW played during the mid-twentieth century.

Our speaker: Dr Val Noone

Val Noone is an Australian writer-editor, historian, social activist and academic, who is a recognised authority on Irish emigration to Australia, especially Victoria, since the time of the great Irish Famine (1845-1852). Noone has a particular interest in the history of the Irish language in Australia, its preservation, and the understanding of its social, cultural and linguistic aspects.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. He was awarded a medal of the Order of Australia in June 2009. In 2013 the Senate of the National University of Ireland (NUI) in Dublin conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa, for his contribution to Irish Studies in Australia.

As a student, he belonged to a Young Christian Students (YCS) group at St Bede’s College, Mentone. As a young priest in various Melbourne parishes, he was chaplain to both YCS and YCW groups and later worked as a lay collaborator for the Melbourne YCW.

The book: Melbourne YCW Origins 1941

This booklet analyses puzzling aspects of the origins in 1941 of the Melbourne branch of the Young Christian Workers (YCW), an outstanding international Catholic youth organisation.

minor but important role in the social and religious life of Australia. Answers are offered to two questions which have caused confusion: what was the role of the well-known right-wing commentator and political activist B A Santamaria in establishing the YCW in Australia; and, why was David Kehoe’s 1981 draft history of the Melbourne YCW never published.

The booklet has seven chapters plus a timeline and bibliography. It opens with a 2020 call by veteran YCW member Leon Magree for clarification of Santamaria’s role. In summary (dates are provisional), the answer offered is that in September 1941 as deputy director of Australian Catholic bishops’ organisation concerned with lay groups, Santamaria together with Daniel Mannix, archbishop of Melbourne, authorised publicly the founding of the non-party political YCW.

However, Santamaria and Mannix had other priorities: a month before they secretly formed a political lobby group known as The Movement with the stated aim of opposing members of the Communist Party in trade unions and the Australian Labor Party. Preludes and tensions are covered via a new approach to sources and a fresh view of the Church’s relationship with the working class in the 1930s.

Highlighted is the crucial work done by the YCW Priests’ Committee, especially Father Frank Lombard, in conjunction with lay leaders such as Ted Long and Frank McCann.

Among the new material in these pages is the discussion of David Kehoe’s draft of a commissioned YCW history plus the full text of the four reports from YCW founders explaining why Kehoe’s draft was not to be published.

This booklet draws not only on academic research but also personal experience of YCW. While written for the general reader, parts will be of interest to specialists in Australian, religious, labour and political history.