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)
