Digby Anderson

Digby Anderson is the director of the British think tank Social Affairs Unit and on the board of the Centre for the New Europe. Anderson has a reputation of being a social critic who espouses controversial views.

He is also a food critic for the Daily Telegraph. His more unusual views include a robust advocacy of a return to Victorian values. His book, This Will Hurt: The Restoration of Virtue and Civic Order, included chapters such as "Administering Punishment Morally, Publicly, and Without Excuse," "Uniformity, Uniforms, and the Maintenance of Adult Authority," and "Ostracism and Disgrace in the Maintenance of a Precarious Social Order."

He is reported to have said, "Stigma is necessary for an orderly society.....Ridicule, gossip, social exclusion are the glue which keeps society in order. We need more of that unpleasantness in our society." 

Tobacco industry involvement
Digby Anderson was a participant in the tobacco industry-funded front group Associates for Research in the Science of Enjoyment, or ARISE. Helmut Gaisch of Philip Morris Science and Technology department in Europe considered Anderson a "top-class expert" who helped "reinforce the tobacco industry's messages." ARISE was an international group of primarily social scientists and academics organized clandestinely by the tobacco industry who toured the world promoting the notion that pleasurable experiences such as eating chocolate, shopping, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes "play a central role in human life and can be beneficial to health" by reducing stress and boosting the immune system.

Digby Anderson retired as Director of the Social Affairs Unit in 2004, but was still writing articles under the name of the Social Affairs Unit as of February, 2005.