Ron Greenwood was born at 15 Lennox Street, Worsthorne, near Burnley, Lancashire, but moved to London in 1931 during the Depression. He was educated at the Wembley County Grammar School which now forms part of Alperton Community School in Middlesex, leaving at the age of 14 to be an apprentice sign-writer. He served with an RAF mobile radio unit first of all in Northern Ireland and later in France during the Second World War.