The early 1950s were the golden age of the Young Conservatives. At its peak, membership stood at about 250,000, although in their more bullish moments, the YCs boasted of half a million. The rapid rise in Young Conservative numbers, from a standing start to 250,000 in five years, was part of a much wider trend which saw party membership mushroom in the postwar years.

Many Conservatives had been shaken by Churchill's defeat in 1945 and faced with the grim realities of a Labour — worse, a socialist — government, they joined in their droves. Membership of the Conservative Party rose from around 911,000 in 1946 to a peak of 2,800,000 in 1953.

Sensing this new danger, Labour launched a similar membership drive, increasing its numbers from 645,000 to just over a million in the same period. However, without a Lord Woolton figure, the Labour party failed to attract younger members in anything like the same numbers as the Conservatives.

For many young people, with precious little by way of entertainment beyond the cinema, the local branch of the YCs offered company and diversion. Branch newsletters give some sense of the activities on offer. In Rushcliffe Roundabout, a magazine for the West Notts Division of Young Conservatives, a page of coming events promises an Evening of Magic and Mince Pies; a Treasure Hunt at the Three Ponds; Haymaking; Sailing Down the River; a Talk by the Governor of Lowdham Grange Borstal Institution; a Visit to BP's Eakring Oil Wells; a Visit to a Local Lace Factory; and a lecture entitled "Race Relations: Red, White and . . . Black" given by Britain's first "coloured" magistrate.

Parents found little to object to. For protective fathers it was far preferable to have their daughters spend a Friday evening with the chairman of the Pudsey branch of the YCs, than at the cinema with some teddy boy with grease in his hair. The YCs began to gain a reputation as something of a marriage bureau.