I’m not a big fan of Stroud. It’s a poor one street town with a slope and a drug problem on the edge of the Cotswolds. It’s got a lot more in common with Swindon than Bourton-On-The-Water. It also happens to be where Roger Hallam lives.
Exactly.
Before my late night serendipitous taxi service for Mrs H; I wouldn’t have listened to Nick Robinson’s Political Thinking on Radio 4 or been reminded that Roger Hallam is the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and more recently Just Stop Oil.
I’m intrigued, despite his pious, forthright delivery, perhaps from sitting through too many Methodist sermons delivered by his minister mum. This is somebody who believes fervently, that civil disobedience is the only way in which our planet can be saved from mass murder, at the hands of the elites.
He’s touching a nerve, not because of his rhetoric, which is irritating and naive, but because I know, deep-down, despite what I’ve done, I could be doing more, a lot more.
I’ve taken a hard look and found a soft liberal. I’m a fully paid up member of the nimbys (not-in-my-back yard) and I don’t like the label or the feeling.
I’m in complete agreement with Hallam about the need for action right now, I’m just not buying that anarchy is the only way to succeed despite appalling government decisions everywhere.
There is overwhelming evidence and death to show that climate change is very real, dangerously real and I’m ready to do my bit as long as my bit doesn’t destroy my fortunate life beyond all recognition.
He’d argue that that is exactly what is going to happen unless I protest, take action of the civil disobedient kind and take you along with me too.
Hallam’s not a popular man, at least not according to the BBC. Aside from the recent Nick Robinson interview, the only other was HARDtalk, recorded in August 2019 with Stephen Sackur.
In the same year, Hallam stood as an independent London candidate in the European Parliamentary elections, receiving 924 votes of a possible 2.2 million (0.04%). I expect four years on he’d argue that it was a mistake and hardly the well trodden path of an anarchist.
What does Roger Hallam stand for?
Firstly, he’s a professional agitator. For at least two years he studied for a PhD at King’s College London, researching how to achieve social change through civil disobedience and radical movements.
He decided to put his theory into practice with two spray painting events at the same university, and odd way to repay them but a useful exercise as far as he was concerned. The second episode caused a claimed £7,000 damage to the university’s Great Hall, which he successfully defended in a three-day trial, arguing that it was a proportionate response to the climate crisis.
His previous hunger strike, also at King’s, highlighted the university’s substantial, oily portfolio of investments. It did result in the university removing £14m of assets, reinvesting into renewables I assume, and a pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025.
He’s a firebrand who believes that the only way to achieve change is through mass resistance and civil disobedience.
In the four years between the two interviews the core message is still much the same. The government, the media, powerful business forces and the rich; collectively called the elites, are lying to the people.
It sounds more like the language of the 1917 Russian Revolution which is probably intended. The result will be mass murder on an extreme which makes the genocidal atrocities of the past look insignificant.
In the first interview, 6 billion people are going to be murdered this century. In the second, it’s a far more nuanced number, based on a scientific article published in the journal, Energies, a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal in August 2023.
The article contends that global warming will roughly cause a billion premature future deaths over the next 100 years - roughly 10% of the 10 billion humans that will then be on the planet.
His point is, this is a conscious, deliberate act and therefore it’s murder. You can intellectualise about it and come out at manslaughter; but the continuation of the current capitalist economy, hellbent on growth and profit, accepted by a society which encourages the unfair distribution of wealth and resource, will result in this wanton destruction. The richest people in society will deliberately kill the poorest.
Where do you stand? Do you feel accused? Does he have a point?
Despite his reassurances that he tells the truth, I think he deliberately mixes scientific reporting, the facts of the matter, with emotional spin, a process which is by default political.
Roger is all about catastrophe and the collapse of society in a decade or less. The only way to stop armageddon, is to protest in a civil disobedient manner. Even if you sign up to his cause, your cause, he would argue, the future is bleak. There is no room for optimism, fun or laughter anymore.
In either interview, he doesn’t really qualify success, beyond taking action which will ensure the UK is net zero by 2025. Presumably to achieve this, the current government or the next will need to be overthrown. Sort of.
The Extinction Rebellion web site explains that the government must create and be led by a Citizen’s Assembly on Climate and Ecological Justice, relying on the common sense of ordinary people.
Given the timing of the next general election, no later than January 2025, why not organise and educate to create such an assembly. Use the time left more effectively to achieve a greener Britain?
I don’t know how many people will die unnecessarily and unexpectedly as a result of climate change. I expect it will be millions but none of them are likely to live in Stroud or Swindon. It will be the unfortunates who live in some of the poorest countries in the world, where choice is a luxury and climate change far more extreme. The results are likely to be devastating.
Roger did at one time have a simpler life. He was an organic farmer on a 10-acre holding in Llandeilo, South Wales. He had a horse called Big Mama to work his six polytunnels along with his 25 employees. He offered a local veg box scheme until the weather went weird, in his words.
Roger reminds me a lot of Jeremy Corbyn, he’s good in opposition. I think he lacks the steel, determination and strategic thinking needed to see this most complex of problems through to any sort of successful conclusion. To win you need power, and for that, you must offer hope.
I don’t think he much cares for either.