Bruce Anderson

Bruce Anderson is a British journalist.

Early Life

Anderson was educated at Campbell College in Northern Ireland. Like Paul Bew, of whom he was a contemporary at both institutions, he took part in the People's Democracy civil rights march that was attacked at Burntollet in 1969.

David Cameron

According to biographers Francis Elliot and James Hanning, it may have been Anderson who recommended the young David Cameron to Prime Minister John Major as part of his question time team in the early 1990s. Anderson holidayed with Cameron and his Conservative Central Office colleague Angie Bray in the summer of 1992. After Cameron became a Conservative front-bencher in July 2003, Anderson tipped him in The Spectator as a future Prime Minister. Anderson has also described himself as a 'family friend' of the Cameron's.

On Islam

Anderson attended the Post-Christian Europe and Resurgent Islam conference in Vienna in May-June 2008.

In an Independent article on the event, he wrote:

Now that the neo-conservative attempt to reconstruct the Middle East has failed, containment and crisis management are the only options. Although this will be harder than it was during the Cold War, the attempt we must try and cultural neurasthenia is of little help. Yet one conclusion is obvious. For much of its history, Vienna was the capital and fortress of the Ostmark: the frontier of western civilisation. Today, the whole of Europe is in the Ostmark.

On Torture

Anderson defended the use of torture in a February 2010 Independent article:

I prepared to receive incoming fire. It came, in the form of a devilish intellectual challenge. "Let's take your hypothesis a bit further. We have captured a terrorist, but he is a hardened character. We cannot be certain that he will crack in time. We have also captured his wife and children".

After much agonising, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one answer to Sydney's question. Torture the wife and children. It is a disgusting idea. It is almost a tragedy that we even have to discuss it, let alone think of acting upon it. But there is nothing to be gained from refusing to face facts, in the way that the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuburger, did last week. His Lordship wrapped himself in a cloak of self-righteousness, traduced an entire security service, showed no understanding of the courage which its officers routinely display: no understanding, indeed, of anything beyond courtroom niceties.

The Guardian's Henry Porter wrote of Anderson's piece:

In the final analysis, I am glad it was published because it exposes Anderson for what he is. He says there is a threat to civilisation. Indeed there is. It comes from people who are prepared to sanction the use of torture.

On Welfare Reform

In a December 2010 article in The Telegraph, Anderson argued that:

For decades, it has been apparent that the misuse of the welfare state has created an ill-fare state. As a result, work-shyness is cascading down the generations. There are at least a million people who believe that they have a hereditary right to subsidised unemployment. Nor are they all inactive. In plenty of cases, the devil finds work for idle hands. The ill-fare state is a recruiting office for the criminal underclass.