 In 1930 James Joyce’s Ulysses was banned in Australia and the Freethought Society was formed with Anderson as President. Anderson’s political influence at Sydney primarily took the form of a libertarian pluralism, particularly concerned with issues of state and religious censorship and interference in education. By the 1940s and 1950s his political position was strongly anti-communist. Yet he remained unpopular with conservative politicians and clerics and was criticised for “corrupting the city’s youth” as late as 1961.