Roger Hallam spent his ultimate eleven days at HMP Wayland – a class C males’s jail in Norfolk – writing an 86-page treatise about the way forward for British politics. He handed me a copywhen we met on a heat Tuesday afternoon at a flat in south London.
In Greedy the Enormity of the Second Hallam lays out a grassroots blueprint for Your Get together – the brand new left-wing motion presently being co-founded by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn. The Extinction Revolt founder’s pitch to the 2 Impartial MPs is that in the event that they observe his technique their new get together will safe 20 per cent of the vote and the “Labour get together will implode.”
In July 2024, Hallam was jailed alongside 4 different activists from Simply Cease Oil, for conspiring to disrupt visitors by having protesters climb over gantries on the M25. He was caught formulating this plan on a Zoom name by a journalist from the Solar, arrested and subsequently handed 5 years in jail.His sentence was later decreased to 4 years and he was launched on remand on 14 August. (A submit on X by JSO declared on the day “Breaking information: ROGER IS FREE!”) This interview with the New Statesman is his first since leaving HMP Wayland – we spoke 5 days after his launch.
“I’ve been to jail fairly a couple of instances since I used to be 19,” he advised me, “I went 3 times after I was within the peace motion as a teen. It was fairly totally different then. However I’ve been three or 4 instances since.” The 12 months Hallam has simply spent inside was his longest interval of incarceration. “I’m type of used to it,” he mentioned.
Hallam, 59, is tall and slim, with a brief gray low ponytail. He appeared drained after I met him, dressed casually in a inexperienced checked shirt, shorts and trainers. An digital ankle tag was wrapped round his left foot. On the bus to satisfy Hallam, I listened to his 2023 look on Nick Robinson’s podcast Political Pondering. It’s a fiery back-and-forth by which Hallam makes an attempt, a number of instances, to show the road of questioning onto Robinson.
Two years on – one in all which was spent in jail – Hallam appeared quieter, extra reflective, even nervous. However the conviction of his beliefs and aims stays. “I’m a bit rusty, truly,” he mentioned, “I received out of jail and barely misplaced my confidence.” He described the 12 months he spent at HMP Wayland as the most effective of his life – “I had the possibility to learn and write, which is my ardour.” (Although he’s eager to level out that this isn’t a common expertise for prisoners). In addition to working frequently, Hallam learn 100 books whereas imprisoned.
Of these he learn, The Matter with Issues by Ian McGilchrist and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis had the most important affect. “I’m a New Statesman-esque mental. I wish to learn my books… now I’m stuffed with barely heady intellectualism,” Hallam mentioned, chuckling (he’s presently studying Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: a idea of political organisation by Rodrigo Nunes).
Naturally studious, Hallam devoted his time inside to develop mental, sensible proposals for the way Your Get together must be run. And that’s the crux of his newest ebook (“effectively, it’s extra of an essay”), which – as he writes within the first chapter – he started writing from his cell at “8.48AM on Thursday 7 August”. Hallam writes as he speaks: with exclamations, laughing asides and lengthy anecdotes. However the intention of this self-published pamphlet is obvious – he’s getting ready the bottom for a brand new left get together.
After I requested Hallam what he plans to do now he’s out of jail, he was unequivocal. “I’m in service to the Corbyn-Sultana challenge,” he advised me, “I’ve been a part of an off-the-cuff community of people that have been on the sting of that for a 12 months or so.” To Hallam, who has supplied the organisational brains of a number of the largest acts of civil disobedience within the UK up to now decade, the creation of Your Get together is enormously vital. He writes in his ebook: “Let me make a declare. I believe that the Corbyn and Sultana announcement on creating a brand new motion/get together is the most important second of our lifetimes. I must be extra clear. I believe it might result in a world political revolution.” That is larger than XR, larger than the ballot tax riots, Hallam writes. Larger – even – than the worldwide scholar uprisings of 1968. “It’s an enormous rupture of momentum within the political area,” Hallam advised me, excitedly leaning ahead from his perch on the couch. “Simply because it hasn’t flowered but, doesn’t imply it isn’t going to. There’s an 80 per cent likelihood it’s going to be the most important political story of the 12 months”.
Within the 4 weeks since Corbyn and Sultana formally introduced the founding of Your Get together; 800,000 individuals have signed as much as its web site. Although these aren’t membership figures Hallam believes the pace and scale of curiosity is critical – and one thing to work with. “You place these issues collectively, and I’ll go and do the maths, and I’ll flip you into the biggest political get together.” If Sultana and Corbyn observe his plan of motion – Hallam argues they might win 20 per cent on the 2029 election – or extra particularly, 12 million votes. (This ambition was first made public by Sultana, who advised a Zoom name of commerce unionists final month that Your Get together must be aiming for between 20-25 per cent of the vote). “If you need a left get together to get 10 per cent of the vote, you’ve already received it. It’s going to get you 30 seats. Who provides a fuck? All you’re going to do is let in Reform,” he mentioned.
Hallam continues to suppose deeply about mass public organising. He’s one thing of an skilled within the discipline: XR’s final protest ‘The Massive One’ noticed 100,000 individuals descend on central London. His concepts are sensible and strategic – diverging barely from a number of the different pondering presently being made public round how Your Get together may operate and function. Greedy the Enormity of the Second was partly a response to James Schneider’s interview within the New Left Evaluate. “As quickly because the left begins speaking conventionally, they’re speaking about one thing which isn’t exact,” he mentioned, “so you recognize we will say ‘oh, we’d like group involvement’, however you’re not truly coping with it socially, scientifically.”
In sensible phrases, this implies a type of group organising bordering on occasions administration. XR made heavy use of residents assemblies – a type of deliberative democracy by which a random but consultant group of individuals are introduced collectively to debate a problem. Hallam factors out that it’s good that figures in and round Your Get together have mentioned that residents assemblies can be used. However with out a clear construction for the way they may work, they danger turning into performative gestures. These occasions should be meticulously stage managed with the intention to obtain true and widespread attain.
“When Mrs Jones from the Wirral involves that meeting, she must be met in 15 seconds with somebody shaking her hand and letting her know she is valued,” Hallam advised me. “She wants a cup of espresso after which she wants to speak to different individuals. In the event you do a very good meeting, 50 per cent of these individuals will go door knocking for you,” he mentioned. “And if you happen to put that by a spreadsheet, you’ve received like 20,000 door titties in 15 weeks. They’ve proven in New York [with Zohran Mamdani] that that mainly wins the election.” He provides: “the stuff about coverage and management… you need to are likely to it, however that’s not the actual present. For the brand new left challenge, the actual present is making organisational design horny.”
That is his greatest critique of Keir Starmer, his incapacity – as Hallam characterises it – to know human and social interactions. “Neoliberalism provides nothing,” he mentioned. “That’s the reason Starmer is such a catastrophe. As a result of he simply treats everybody as a machine.” Hallam added: “We’re not capabilities of ideology. We’re emotional beings. And if you wish to get the perfect out of individuals, you’ll want to attend to their emotionality.” This, he factors out, is the right way to deal with the persistent concern of small boat crossings. “You might need an issue with the boats, but it surely doesn’t go deep. You place them into an meeting, and so they’ll go, ‘Oh yeah. Nicely, clearly it’s an issue with the wealthy and we must always tax the wealthy,’” he mentioned.
Hallam’s time in jail has not disadvantaged him of his attribute doomsday urgency (“Local weather is mainly Hitler”). He believes that the world will hit 2 levels of warming – smashing previous the UN’s 1.5-degree goal – within the subsequent ten years. He blames the truth that tackling emissions has fallen to the underside of the worldwide precedence listing because the consequence of “excessive social repression”. Surprisingly, whereas he’s clearly anxious by current developments within the authorities’s method to protest – he accuses “the Labour get together [of] placing individuals in jail”, for instance – he’s clearly extra involved by what he perceives as a capitalistic energy relationship inside society that forestalls collective motion (“You’ve received to get a job and so forth”). The turning level, he advised me, will come when there’s a local weather catastrophe nearer to residence. “For example, when 2,000 individuals die in a flood in Spain – you’ll doubtless get 2 million individuals [protesting] in London,” he mentioned.
There’s a streak of evangelical Christianity in Hallam’s concepts, and his method to group organising. Mark 10:45 says Jesus got here to “serve to not be served”. And Hallam repeats the notion that these concerned in grassroots actions – whether or not that be XR, JSO and even the brand new left get together – are in service. Their participation should not be pushed for egocentric achieve, however relatively to advance the resilience and prospects of others. Hallam was introduced up in a Methodist family, and he factors to the success of the Methodist motion in giving construction to the working class in the course of the late 1700s when “25 per cent of London was pissed at anyone level” as a superb instance of profitable group organising. After I ask him how a lot an affect religion has had on him, he pauses. “That’s what socialism is. It’s secularised Christianity… We’d like a brand new language, which is participatory however moral”.
The individual whom Hallam thinks embodies this most readily within the present political second is Corbyn. “That’s mainly what Corbyn represents, proper? Everyone is aware of he’s not an mental genius. He’s not a strategic Napoleon. He’s a essentially first rate bloke,” Hallam mentioned, “and that’s what it’s received to be based mostly on… Meaning we must be humble, and we must be in service.” For now, Hallam is protecting his head down, quietly organising a community of group teams and activists able to mobilise as quickly as Your Get together will get off the bottom. Corbyn and Sultana want solely say the phrase, and Roger Hallam can be at their service.
[See also: My advice to Jeremy Corbyn]