Philip Dundas - Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous Scotland

Sir Philip Dundas (1899 - 1952) was the grandson of Sir Robert, 1st Baronet of Arniston, the family a remarkable
Scottish legal and political dynasty and their line be traced back to Sir James Dundas (1570-1628), the first member of
family to enter law, he, Governor of Berwick and M.P. for Midlothian (1612 - 1625), knighted by James VI and I.

Philip Dundas was the eldest of a family of six boys and one girl and inherited the baronetcy on the death of his father
in 1930. However, he never lived at the family home of Arniston House.

Dundas served for many years in The Black Watch, including a tour of duty in Silesia after The First World War,
where his regiment was stationed to keep the peace until plebiscites were arranged to settle the new borders between
Germany and Poland. On retirement from the army, he began farming at Kildalloig, just outside Campbeltown, in
Kintyre.

His greatest achievement however is unconnected with either the army or farming and arises from a personal battle
with alcoholism.

In 1948, realising the need for assistance with his affliction, Philip Dundas was fortunate when the London-based
'Oxford Group', a Christian organization founded by an American Lutheran minister, Dr. Frank Buchman, who, in
1908, had had a conversion experience in a chapel in Keswick, in the English Lake District, invited him to travel to
America so that he might benefit from hearing about the experiences of members of the recently created Alcoholics
Anonymous 'self-help' group's members.

Just how Dundas came into contact with The Oxford Group is unrecorded, but it is of some interest, perhaps here,
that the group had become very controversial and that there was much criticism of its tactics, especially after 1938
when the movement became known as 'Moral Re-Armament', the group's change of name lying in the political climate
of the late 1930's, in which the remilitarisation of post-World War I Germany was a contentious issue, Buchman
proclaiming that The World needed not military re-armament but moral re-armament.

In any case, it is most likely that Dundas' contact was through the first English branch of Alcoholics Anonymous,
which had been founded in 1948, after an American woman, staying in London's Dorchester Hotel, had written to
five Londoners, already in touch with 'The Alcoholic Foundation' and brought them together, on March 31, 1947,
with other, North Amercian 'Alcoholics Anonymous' members.

The history of Alcoholics Anonymous goes back to 1934, when alcoholic stockbroker Bill Wilson began to
acknowledge that he had ruined a promising Wall Street career with his constant drunkenness.

Wilson was treated at Charles B. Towns hospital by Dr William Silkworth, who promoted a 'disease concept of
alcoholism' and, while in the hospital, Wilson underwent, what he believed to be, a spiritual experience and,
convinced of the existence of a healing higher power, was able to stop drinking.

The following year, in 1935, on a business trip to Akron, Ohio, Bill Wilson felt the urge to drink again and in an
effort to stay sober, he sought another alcoholic to help.

Then introduced to a Dr Bob Smith, the pair co-founded what began as 'The Alcoholic Foundation' with a word of
mouth program to help alcoholics, Smith's last drink on June 10, 1935, considered to be the founding date of 'The
Foundation and then, in 1939, after Bob Wilson's authorship of a book entitled, Alcoholics Anonymous, informally
referred to as "The Big Book", which suggested a twelve-step program involving admission of powerlessness, moral
inventory, and asking for help from a higher power, the book's title gave rise to the organization's name.

Dundas was so grateful for his own liberation from alcoholism that he determined to introduce this new approach to
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his own country and thus became the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous in Scotland, the first meetings in Scotland in
May 1949, in Edinburgh and in Glasgow's St Enoch (Station) Hotel.

There are still some today who remember meeting him and are grateful for his influence and example. There are many
more who are profoundly thankful for his work and he is held in high esteem by the Scottish branch of Alcoholics
Anonymous.

Though many of his more illustrious forebears had been the subject of biographical and historical studies, it wasn't
until the writing of a family biography, by Sir Philip's daughter, that the stories of 'the forgotten generation of
Arniston', of Philip and his five brothers, their careers ranging from banking to The Fleet Air Arm, became clear and
put on record.

Though the family title became extinct on the death of Thomas Calderwood Dundas, in 1970, Arniston House, now
open to the public, remains in the care of the family.

Ronachan House, near Clachan

Although few people in Kintyre could ever have been aware of Philip Dundas' connections to the founding of
Scotland's first Alcoholics Anonymous' branches, Dundas' legacy to the area must also lie in the community's general
support of The Church of Scotland's alcohol and drug rehabilitation centre at Ronachan House, overlooking an idyllic
cove, near Clachan, at the entrance to West Loch Tarbert.

Most of those coming to Ronachan House have had a long history of substance misuse and the aim is to provide a safe,
alcohol and drug free, supportive environment, free of pressure, where people can learn again how to live
a purposeful, stable and secure life in preparation a new start in life and learn how to overcome the dependency which
has long been blighting their lives and those of their family and friends.

Ronachan, with its experienced group of qualified addiction staff, offers education about alcohol and drugs and its
courses provide for those regaining education and skills training in personal health and learing properly about nutrition,
home and family management, parenting and child care, personal finances and budgeting, social skills, recreational
skills, interview skills, coping with crises, managing emotions, coping with failure, personal presentation and can also
help people get into further and higher education, the focus being to help people again gain their self-confidence and
their ability to cope successfully with the ordinary courses of their daily lives.

One cannot doubt that Philip Dundas of Arniston and Kildalloig would have approved.

THE ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS SERENITY PRAYER