Illustration · An imagined writing table at night in 1960, with a typed manuscript of the Twelve Concepts for World Service, pencil corrections on its pages, a copy of the Third Legacy Manual and a full ashtray. Not drawn from a photograph.

The right of decision

Bill W. spent three years writing down why AA’s services work as they do, and the Conference that accepted his Twelve Concepts in 1962 outvoted him the same spring.

“But trust him first. That is the big thing.”

Bill W., on giving a trusted servant room to decide, closing the Conference of 1960 · transcript of the recording, AA History Lovers, 2008

Why, not how

In July 1955, at St. Louis, AA’s founders handed its services to the General Service Conference. (Legacy, in Rule 62, tells of the day.) The Conference’s charter, approved by the delegates that June, ended with six promises, its General Warranties. One was that no member of the Conference “shall ever be placed in a position of unqualified authority over any of the others.” Another, that the Conference would never become “the seat of perilous wealth or power.” (Go deeper sets out all six.)

The charter said who sat where. It said less about who decided what, and between the office, the trustees and the Conference there was what AA’s own guide to the Concepts later called “pulling and hauling,” with Bill himself sometimes part of it. At the close of the 1956 Conference he offered “four principles that might someday permeate all of A.A.’s services”: petition, appeal, participation and decision. The feature below follows them.

A large hotel of many stories beside a railroad station, with a broad street in front. — The Hotel Commodore, beside Grand Central, in a photograph of about 1919. The Conference met here in 1956, when Bill offered his four principles.Library of Congress

Then he started writing. At the close of the 1960 Conference, at the Hotel Roosevelt, he told the delegates what he had: something he called Twelve Concepts for World Service. Not “another batch of twelve principles or points, God forbid,” he said, but the ideas that already worked, put in order. The Third Legacy Manual, AA’s service handbook, told how; the Concepts would tell why. “This has been a three-year job.” Eleven of the twelve essays were done, and the last, on the Warranties, was still to come. If later changes worked out badly, he hoped the Concepts would be “a point of safe return.”

On April 26, 1962, again at the Roosevelt, the Conference “voted unanimously to accept Bill’s manuscript.” The same Conference voted 72 to 36 to keep the nonalcoholic majority on the board, which Bill had been trying for years to end. (Mr. Anonymous, in Number One Man, tells that fight.) His own recommendations were made available anyway, in a pamphlet at the office with the trustees’ comments, “in keeping with Concept V and the traditional responsibility of minority reports.” “My main service tasks are now complete,” he told the delegates, as Bob P.’s history quotes him. “The future belongs to you.”

Listen The right of decision About 1 minute

Four rights

Petition, appeal, participation, decision

Bill’s four principles of 1956, and how each was worded in the Concepts the Conference accepted in 1962, in their short form of 1971, and in the sentence the Conference added to its charter in 2013.

The 1956 talk as printed at silkworth.net; the Concepts of 1962 from AA’s Twelve Concepts Illustrated, which gives Bill’s long form; the short form from the Big Book’s appendix; the charter’s sentence from the Conference’s advisory actions.

Bill W.’s four rights of 1956 in four texts
Right	1956Bill’s talk	1962The Concepts	1971The short form	2013The charter
Petition	“an ancient device to protect minorities.”	Inside Concept V: “petitions for the redress of personal grievances”	Not named: “personal grievances receive careful consideration.”	“the Rights of Petition and Appeal”
Appeal	“the right to appeal.”	Concept V: “a traditional ‘Right of Appeal’ ought to prevail”	Concept V: “so that minority opinion will be heard”	The Conference “may agree to hear Concept V Appeals”
Participation	“all Conference members are on our service team.”	Concept IV: “a traditional ‘Right of Participation’”	Concept IV: “a voting representation in reasonable proportion to the responsibility”	“particularly the Right of Participation”
Decision	“proper powers of decision, carefully and definitely defined.”	Concept III: “a traditional ‘Right of Decision’”	Concept III: “To insure effective leadership”	Not named in the sentence.

Petition comes back

Bill’s four principles became Concepts III, IV and V. Petition, the one he called “an ancient device,” went inside the right of appeal in 1962, dropped out of the short form in 1971, and was named again in the Conference’s charter in 2013.

For a closer look

Go deeper

When Bill wrote the Concepts; the six promises of 1955; and how his words have been kept and changed.

When did he write them?

The accounts don’t agree. In the order they were set down:

1960. Bill himself, at the Conference: the idea came “two or three years ago,” and “This has been a three-year job.” A transcript of the recording.
1979. The booklet was “first published in 1962,” after Bill had studied the United States government, the churches and the Washingtonians, a temperance society of the 1840s. Lois W., in Lois Remembers.
1984. The Concepts were “written by Bill W. in 1960-61.” The trustees’ report, in Box 4-5-9.
1985. The four principles of 1956 were already “presaging Concepts III, IV and V.” Bob P.’s unpublished history.
1994. “when he wrote the Twelve Concepts in 1959, most of the Fellowship wasn’t interested at all.” Nell Wing, Bill’s secretary, in the Grapevine.
2001. “Written by co-founder Bill W. in 1962.” The Big Book’s appendix.
2009. The theme of the 1956 Conference was “Petition, Appeal, Participation and Decision,” and the four became Concepts 3, 4, 5 and 6. Arthur S.’s timeline.

Six promises

The General Warranties, Article 12 of the Conference’s charter and later the twelfth Concept, as AA prints them today. The Conference promises:

never to become “the seat of perilous wealth or power”;
to keep enough money to run on, “plus an ample reserve”;
never to place one member “in a position of unqualified authority over any of the others”;
to reach important decisions “by discussion, vote, and whenever possible, by substantial unanimity”;
never to take an action “personally punitive or an incitement to public controversy”;
never to “perform any acts of government,” and to stay “democratic in thought and action.”

The resolution read at St. Louis in 1955, which says it follows Article XII of the charter, words the sixth more fully: the Conference “shall never enact laws or regulations binding on A.A. as a whole or upon any A.A. group or upon any member thereof.” Changing a warranty takes the written consent of three-quarters of AA’s groups. In 1957, “As Bill has suggested,” the Steps were put under the same rule.

Kept and changed

Bill expected the Concepts to change. What has happened to his words since, in the Conference’s own record:

1962–1971. Bill himself made changes to the text until shortly before his death.
1985. The Service Manual was to carry the Concepts “as adopted by the 12th General Service Conference on April 26, 1962,” with later facts and figures checked and added as notes.
1996 and 2013. Two misprints were fixed, “set income” for “net income” in the second Warranty and “uniformed” for “uninformed” in the essay on Concept IX, both there “since the first printing.”
2016. Two paragraphs were cut from the essay on Concept XI, about the women on the office staff. They began, “Women workers present still another problem.”
2021 and 2026. The Conference asked for a section titled “Amendments” at the end of the Concepts, and in 2026 approved a draft of it.

Sources

Bill W., “Petition, Appeal, Participation and Decision,” talk at the General Service Conference, 1956, as printed at silkworth.net.
Bill W., proposal for Twelve Concepts for World Service, closing talk at the 10th General Service Conference, April 1960; transcript “verified against the voice recording,” posted to AA History Lovers, 2008 (silkworth.net).
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. The St. Louis resolution of 1955 and the Conference Charter (Article 12).
Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984 (the Conference’s summary of 1962).
Lois Remembers. Al-Anon Family Groups, 1979.
Bob P., “The General Service Conferences,” chapter 11 of his manuscript history of AA, 1985, unpublished, at silkworth.net (1956; 1960; 1962).
AA World Services, Advisory Actions of the General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous, 1951–2022 (M-39) (1957, 1962, 1971, 1985, 1989, 1996, 2001, 2013, 2016, 2021).
AA World Services, The Twelve Concepts for World Service Illustrated (P-8).
Alcoholics Anonymous, fourth edition, 2001, Appendix VII, “The Twelve Concepts (Short Form).”
“Reports from G.S.O., the General Service Board, and Trustees’ Committees,” Box 4-5-9, June–July 1984.
“Spellbound by A.A.: An Interview with Nell Wing,” AA Grapevine, June 1994, at silkworth.net.
Arthur S., A Narrative Timeline of AA History, 2009.
“The 76th General Service Conference: ‘Humility in Action’,” Box 4-5-9, Summer 2026.
The Hotel Commodore, Pershing Square, New York, photograph copyrighted by Irving Underhill, about 1919, Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication.