Why the General Service
Conference?
Answer
Alcoholics Anonymous, we
think, will always need a world center -- some
point of reference on the globe where our few
but important universal services can focus and
then radiate to all who wish to be informed or
helped. Such a place will ever be needed to look
after our over-all public relations, answer
inquiries, foster new Groups and distribute our
standard books and publications. We shall also
want a place of advice and mediation touching
important questions of general policy or A.A.
Tradition. We shall require, too, a safe
repository for the modest funds we shall use to
carry out these simple, but universal purposes.
Of course we must take care that
our universal center of service never attempts
to discipline or govern. Conversely, we ought to
protect our good servants working there from
unreasonable demands or political demands of any
kind. No personal power, no officials or
resounding titles, no politics, no accumulation
of money or property, none but vital universal
services to Alcoholics Anonymous - that is our
ideal. To do without such a Center would be to
invite confusion and disunity; to install there
a centralized authority would be to encourage
political strife and cleavage. Some little
organization of our services, securely bound by
tradition, we shall surely need - just enough,
and of such a character as to permanently
forestall any more.
At the center of A.A. we now have
the excellent body of custody and service. Our
Trustees have gradually come to symbolize the
collective conscience of AA, our general office
acts in the manner of the heart which receives
problems through its veins and pumps out
assistance through its myriad arteries, and The
Grapevine tries to record the true voice of
Alcoholics Anonymous. Such is the happy state of
our central affairs that we surely must take
pains to preserve and protect, we trust, into a
long and useful future.
Therefore, our headquarters
problem of the future will, in all probability,
consist in guarding and preserving, in its main
outlines, what we already have. How then, shall
we best keep intact our ideal of service; how
shall we avoid national or international
politics; how can we best devise against any
possible breakdown of the present A.A. Service
Headquarters and how shall we give each A.A. in
the world a continual assurance that all is well
with it; that it continues to perform its tasks
effectively, so meriting his warm support, moral
and financial?
To these problems of tomorrow
many are giving prayerful reflection. A.A.' s
are commencing to say what, or who, is going to
guarantee the operation of our General
Headquarters when the old-timers who inaugurated
it have passed off the scene, especially very
early ones like Dr. Bob and Bill. Known so well
to us from the pioneering period of A.A., these
early ones still occupy a unique position. They
command a wider confidence and still wield more
personal influence than anyone else could again,
or for that matter, ever should. Having helped
set up our universal Service Center they asked
the rest of us to have confidence in it. And we
do have that confidence, not that we much know
the present Trustees, but because we know Bob
and Bill and the other oldsters, in the long
future, when these oldsters can no longer assure
us, who is going to take their place? Does it
not seem clear that the A.A. movement and its
Service Center must soon be drawn closer
together? Though we know our General Office and
our Grapevine fairly well, shouldn't we somehow
draw closer to our Trustees? Shouldn't we take
steps to allay our feelings of remoteness while
the older ones are still around, and there is
still time to experiment?" Such are the
questions now being asked, and they are good
ones.
Perhaps the best suggestion for
closing the gap between our Alcoholic Foundation
and the A.A. Groups is the idea of creating what
we might call the General Service Conference of
Alcoholics Anonymous. (Proposal by Bill W. and
Dr. Bob to the Alcoholic Foundation, April,
1947).
Another Answer
Let's face these facts
(October 1950). First. Dr. Bob and I are
perishable, we can't last forever. Second. The
Trustees are almost unknown to the A.A.
membership. Third. In future years our Trustees
couldn't possibly function without direct
guidance from A.A. itself. Somebody must advise
them. Somebody, or something must take the place
of Dr. Bob and I. Fourth. Alcoholics Anonymous
is out of its infancy. Grown up, adult now, it
has full right and plain duty to take direct
responsibility for its own Headquarters. Fifth.
Clearly then, unless the Foundation is firmly
anchored, through State and Provincial
representatives, to the movement it serves, a
Headquarters breakdown will someday be
inevitable. When its old timers vanish, an
isolated Foundation couldn't survive one grave
mistake or serious controversy. Any storm could
blow it down. Its revival wouldn't be simple.
Possibly it could never be revived. Still
isolated, there would be no means of doing that.
Like a fine car without gasoline it would be
helpless. Sixth. Another serious flaw; As a
whole, the A.A. movement has never faced a grave
crisis. But someday it will have to. Human
affairs being what they are, we can't expect to
remain untouched by the hour of serious trouble.
With direct support unavailable, with no
reliable cross-section of A.A. opinion, how
could our remote Trustees handle a hazardous
emergency? This gaping "open end" in our present
set-up could positively guarantee a debacle.
Confidence in the Foundation would be lost. A
.A.'s everywhere would say: "By whose authority
do the Trustees speak for us? And how do they
know they are right?" With A.A. Service
life-lines tangled and severed, what then might
happen to the million who don't know. Thousands
would continue to suffer or die because we had
taken no fore-thought, because we had forgotten
the virtue of prudence This must not come to
pass.
That is why the Trustees, Dr. Bob
and I now propose the General Service Conference
of Alcoholics Anonymous. That is why we urgently
need your direct help. Our principle services
must go on living. We think the General Service
Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous can be the
agency to make that certain. (Third Legacy
Pamphlet, October 1950)
