JOHN ANDERSON AND THE BOMB SQUAD

In the Southeastern corner of the Quadrangle at the University of Sydney, there once grew a large jacaranda tree; a glory to behold when in full bloom and covered with its sky-blue flowers. It has since been replaced by a sapling of the same species. Jacarandas, though native to Central America and not Australia, are widely grown as an ornamental tree the world over. 

 The university’s philosophy department and its lecture theatre used to be located in that same corner. Also close by was the office occupied from late 1927 to the early 1960s by the legendary Professor John Anderson, and central to Anderson’s philosophy was emphasis on unceasing enquiry and criticism. This was no better exemplified than in the trial and death of the Athenian philosopher Socrates, the story of which is related by Plato in his Apology of 399 BCE. That in turn was Anderson’s introductory text to freshers in Philosophy, and expounded upon and discussed at length by him for a full term. Robert Hughes, in his role as resident cartoonist of the student newspaper Honi Soit, once did a cartoon of Anderson contemplating a chalice labelled Hemlock: the poisonous draught forced upon Socrates by the Athenian authorities. 

Shortly after his arrival at the university 1927, Anderson had begun playing his Socratic role of ‘corrupting the youth,’ mainly by advancing arguments directed against Christianity and religion generally. He had a good half of Sydney totally outraged, but no Christian cleric was anywhere near to being his intellectual equal. The University Senate sounded the alarm bells and set about finding a way to counter Anderson’s influence. 

How it approached this project was told to me one morning in 1960 by Milo Roxon, brother of ‘Diamond Lil’ and a lecturer in philosophy, as he and I happened to be walking together from Redfern Railway Station to the university. According to Milo, the Senate had appointed John Anderson to the Challis Chair of Philosophy because he came highly recommended. (Anderson had been a leading light in both mathematics and philosophy at Edinburgh before taking up that chair.) But it was not long before he came to be seen by the worthy senators as an enfant terrible and a bete noir. So what to do? 

The Senate then hit on the brilliant idea of creating a second chair in philosophy, for which there was ample precedent: there were multiple chairs in mathematics and engineering for starters. So they created a chair in Moral and Political Philosophy. Their next problem was the selection of its first professor. They understandably wanted to avoid another Anderson. 

The answer came to somebody in their ranks, no doubt in a blinding syllogistic flash, and it was quickly accepted by all the rest of the senators. Anderson had criticised a paper given by the Australian philosopher Samuel Alexander (1859-1938). At around the same time, another prominent philosopher, George Stout (1860-1944) had supported Alexander, and George Stout’s son Alan was an applicant for the job! 

 They had reasoned thus: 

 a. Anderson is anti-Alexander; 

b. Stout senior is pro-Alexander; 

c. THEREFORE Stout junior will be pro-Alexander, 

d. AND THEREFORE…. (drums roll please Mr Conductor!) 

e. Stout junior will be anti-Anderson…!!!! 

As it turned out, Alan Stout would as readily disagree with Anderson as fly to the moon. His forte was drawing everyone’s attention with minimal delay to the fact that his first deed after his arrival in Sydney had been to purchase a prime bit of real estate at Whale (or was it Bilgola?) Beach. (I had that from Dr Wal Suchting, lecturer in Philosophy in the 1960s who gave me a first-hand account of his first meeting with Stout, in which the said real estate was a substantial part of the philosophical discussion.) And apart from some very ordinary contributions to the literature of philosophy, Stout became Patron of the Sydney University Wine and Cheese Society. The Senate thought it was buying a torpedo with which it would sink that pirate vessel SS Anderson, but got a gruyere-nibbling mouse instead. 

In keeping with his times, Anderson had at first flirted with Marxism and then its Trotskyist variant, but as he opposed all forms of authoritarianism, he later abandoned socialist ideology completely. When he started to resile from positions he had previously taken, many of his disciples deserted his Free Thought Society. Led by philosophy lecturer Jim Baker, they formed in 1951 the university’s Libertarian Society. It promoted not only critical thought, but a more anarchist and permanent protest attitude to life generally. 

Anderson would have nothing to do with any of that, but none the less the Andersonian philosophy of relentless critique was still the dominant influence amidst the Libertarians. 

 At the end of World War 2, the university was swamped by a deluge of ex-servicemen on repatriation scholarships, and Anderson was not backward in coming forward to denounce the whole business. As far as he was concerned, Sydney University was being turned into a degree factory bent on churning out technicians. He believed the university should concentrate on teaching the skills of critical thinking, and that a second institution should be set up to cater for those inclined to engineering, the sciences, medicine and other such specialties. (This eventually came to pass as the University of New South Wales.) 

But the ex-servicemen were not going to take Anderson’s attacks without some sort of response. Moreover, among them they had men with every military capability. So their reply to Anderson took the form of a bomb made from an empty treacle tin, filled with some suitable explosive and fitted with an electric detonator. This they fastened to the top of the handy little newly-planted jacaranda sapling happily located just outside Anderson’s office, and waited for Anderson to appear; which as he kept a timetable and routine as regular and predictable as that of the British Railways and its iconic Flying Scotsman, he soon enough did. 

And so the sappers’ bomb went off, the blast shattering no windows but every bit of the silence around the normally serene Quad. Both the top of the tree and the tin were blown to pieces; the tin to two and the tree to many, many more. It all gave Anderson one hell of a fright, and he reportedly took off like a rabbit down to the Nicholson Museum in the SW corner of the Quadrangle. That was directly beneath the glorious neo-Gothic Fisher Library, and it housed the university’s archaeological collection. Anderson locked himself in, and remained there amid the relics of ancient civilisations until eventually persuaded that all danger was gone. Then he came out again, no doubt somewhat sadder, and definitely a whole lot wiser. 

The tree subsequently developed a fork in its stem, at around knee-height. A splendid photo of it in full bloom and on both sides of what we might call that historic Anderson Bomb Fork, illustrates a recent piece by historian Salvatore Babones, The Group of Eight’s Chinese Whispers at https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/08/the-group-of-eights-chinese-whispers/

The ex-servicemen all thought it was a great stunt and joke, including my then Sydney neighbour Len Schroeder (ex-AIF) who told me the story, and may have been an insider. 

History is there for all of us to see, as long as we know what to look for. Such can happen. The price of liberty is indeed eternal vigilance; and ongoing Andersonian critique.