An extraordinary interview with Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, and the mastermind of Just Stop Oil. 

From Climate Etc.

BY MARK HODGSON

An extraordinary interview

Whatever one thinks of Roger Hallam, I think it’s fair to say that it’s challenging to listen to him for very long. Or at least I find it so, which is why I claim to have taken one for the team in transcribing below his interview with Nick Robinson on BBC Radio 4’s Political Thinking programme the other week.

I wonder why the BBC interviewed him? Perhaps it agrees with his agenda? Whatever the reason, I think they have done the public a service by allowing them to hear what one of the main people behind Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil believes. If the public hears what he says, surely the cause of XR and JSO must be undermined still further? So here it is, in all its unadulterated glory. I feel moved to say that I don’t think I’ve ever listened to such disjointed drivel in my life, but that’s just my opinion of course. I’d be interested to know what you think. There is quite a lot of talking over one another in places. I have done my best where that happens – it is signified by individual speech blocks beginning or ending with three dots (i.e. …):

NR: Disruption works. Disruption is justified. So says my guest this week, Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, and the mastermind of Just Stop Oil. He joins me here on Political Thinking, an opportunity for a conversation with, not a news interrogation of, someone who shapes our political thinking about what has shaped theirs. Hallam argues – and I quote – that only mass civil resistance can stop the global one percent imposing mass death on billions of people. Agree with him, or passionately disagree, there’s no denying that he is one of the most potent organisers of political protests of recent times. Roger Hallam, welcome to Political Thinking.

RH: Hi.

NR: That quote came from your website. There’s another quote on the front page. It says “The essence of what is human is the ability to make a decision, a conscious decision, about what is right in life.” What do you mean?

RH: Well, I thought we were gonna talk about this later in the interview but, OK, let’s start with the big point. So, the big point I suppose is that at a time of existential crisis people have to and tend to make a decision about what’s right and wrong. And they base their decision on that virtue, on the notion of virtues. They don’t take utilitarian decisions, they don’t go “what will work, what won’t work?” And I think our culture’s in the process of transitioning towards a realisation we don’t have control. We have ontrol of our own lives, we don’t have control over what’s going to happen over the next thirty years. And so what’s most important is that we live a good life, in an Aristelian [sic] sense, dare I say it. And that’s where I’m at and that’s broadly what I promote to the people in terms of them making the decision to go into resistance.

NR: Do you mean that what I spend my day job doing – asking question of politicians about this or that policy initiative – in a sense misses the point, as far as you’re concerned, when it comes to the threat tht we’re now facing?

RH: Yeah, well, at the danger of disrupting you, ha ha, I’m just gonna read you a quote, so hopefully your audience can understand a little more viscerally what we’re actually talking about. So, you know, I get sent science articles three or four times a day. So, there’s nothing particularly unique about this, but it came about a month ago from a peer reviewed paper, er, in a journal called Energies, and this is what it says: “If warming reaches or exceeds two degrees centigrade mainly richer humans will be responsible for killing roughly one billion mainly poorer humans.” OK? So…

NR: And that’s a result of climate change, which produces drought, produces famine and so on and so forth…

RH: No. What that quote is saying is climate change is not killing anyone. It’s mainly richer human beings who are killing poorer human beings. And the tool of the death project is destruction of the climate….

NR: Tool is an interesting word, and I quoted you as saying the global one per cent are imposing mass death. You’re arguing that this is a conscious, a deliberate, a calculated act by those people, are you, rather than the by-product of what they would no doubt justify as growth, expansion of wealth, and so on?

RH: It’s an interesting intellectual digression…

NR: But you think it misses the point?

RH: …to split hairs over what degree of murder it is.

NR: It was a genuine question, because it’s your language…

RH: I’m just choosing my words carefully. I think (pause) when your audience hears that, you’ve got two options, and you’ve got two options, which is to try and intellectualise around it and, you know, ask a reasonable intellectual question, which is “to what degree is it murder, to what degree is it manslaughter?” But that is a displacement activity. The main human response to that should be massively emotional. Emotional about what’s going to happen to you, what’s going to happen to your family, what’s going to happen to the country, what’s going to happen to the whole world. What’s going to happen for the next hundred thousand years, because this is going to go on and on. And the biggest problem is journalists like yourself – with all due respect – and a lot of elite people are incapable of emotionally connecting. And what we know from, you know, ancient wisdom, but also from modern psychology, is that reason is a product of emotion. Unless you can actually feel the terror and horror of what I’ve just said, you’re not going to be able to act rationally and reasonably in response to that horror.

NR: One of the things I want to understand in this interview is how you think – and how you have very successfully persuaded other people to think – do you think that emotional reaction, the thing you say I’m incapable of, but the interview’s not about me, is what you did successfully produce a few years back in that very successful few days for you when Extinction Rebellion brought chaos to the streets of London – if you’re a critic – or finally showed how many people were willing to stand up and be counted to fight for, er to fight against climate change.

RH: So, I disagree with what you just said. I think it is about you. And it’s about the audience. So one of the things you learn about how to persuade people or how to create mobilisation is about centring things on the actual moment, this moment, right? We have a moment here. I am talking to you, you’re talking to me, a whole number of people are listening to this. Let’s focus on our responsibilities and our emotions, when we’ve just heard that one thousand million people will – note the quote – will be killed by mainly rich people in the next two generations, right? If we are going to actually survive this beyond traumatic experience, which is effectively locked in, we have to learn to think about the immediacy of the moment rather than engage in what I would describe as the privilege of detachment. Right? You know, you’re doing this interview, that’s all well and good. If we were in 1995 I would be answering your questions and be very grateful, but we’re not in 1995, we’re in 2023.

NR: What I’m interested in, let’s say I reacted in the way that you – is want the right word? – you, you would want me to, and what you don’t want me to do, and this isn’t this interview, is to say well, some scientists don’t agree with that, a number of them don’t agree with this timescale, we’re not having that debate today, that’s for another time and another place, ‘cos there are other views, as you know. What is it that you want the reaction to be, of me or anybody else, it’s “My God, this should stop and it should stop now”, is that the reaction you’re expecting?

RH: The very question of how do you want me to react, for me shows that you simply haven’t taken the information on. You know, if someone came through that door and said “Your partner’s in hospital” you wouldn’t be saying “Well, what sort of reaction do you want me to have to that?” You’d be going “I’ve got to go, Roger. Bye.” There’s an emergency, you know, like, three years ago the British Parliament, as you know, four years ago I think it is now, made a decision, right, on behalf of this country that we are in an emergency.

NR: That was the wording that they used…when Thereas May was Prime Minister soon after Extinction Rebellion took to the streets…

RH: No one in the political class – including yourself and your colleagues at the BBC – have even come close to understanding and acting upon what an emergency is. An emergency is when you clear the decks, right? What we should be talking about in this interview is not a nice gentlemanly discussion about my background and you know, what I think about the theory of social change. You can have me on for a whole bunch of series’ and we can go into that. But I haven’t been on the BBC for – what?- three years now. The last time I was on was Hard Talk and – what was it called? – More or Less said I was making it up when I said billions of people were going to die, right? I’ve got half an hour on your show. There’s an emergency. What I want to talk about is you. Cos you have been…

NR: Oh, this is interesting. You want to come onto an interview programme and interview me, rather than the other way around?

RH: yes, because that’s how social change works. Social…

NR: Yeah, well I’m going to ask you some questions, and you can ask me some questions, so why don’t we do a deal half-way…

RH: Let me just finish. I’m not going to go on for ages. Let me just finish and say, the process of social change, the process of, of gettings things done in an emergency is all about transgression. It’s all about saying what you’re saying is not important. This is what’s important…

NR: Sure.

RH: …because it’s objectively important, because that’s what an emergency is.

NR: I’m teasing you gently, but you’re suggesting that by hijacking this interview, in a sense, this is a form of civil resistance, like that that you have promoted….

RH: It’s not a move, right?

NR: Well it is…

RH: No it’s not, right? You could construct it as that, but it’s not, like…

NR: Well what is it, then? If it’s not a move.

RH: It’s a visceral reaction to my total horror that the British establishment has completely failed to protect the people of this country.

NR: Well forgive me Roger, you went to university and you studied civil resistance for a long time, you came in to this interview with a lot of notes written down. You do make moves, you do make calculations. One of the reasons you’re interesting to interview is because strategically you have turned out two of the most successful, influential protest movements this country has seen in recent times. So let’s not pretend you don’t work things out.

RH: No, obviously not. I’m human, and I spend a lot of hours each day trying to work out what to do and what not to do. But the critical point here that I’m trying to make, and to your audience, because it’s your audience I’ve come to speak to – no disrespect to you, right – is, is when something so awful as this is happening, you have to get your existential ducks in a row. You need to decide what sort of person you are and what sort of life you want to lead. And the fundamental question is how you’re going to lead a good life, right. Most people don’t think about this much because, you know, most of the time it’s fairly obvious, you’re looking after your family, you have a good job. But there’s a massive missing element, which is to protect your country and to protect the human race.

NR: Perfectly fair point. Why don’t we do a deal, which is I ask you some of the questions I want to ask you and you ask me some, and it’s a podcast. We’ve got, we’ve got time to do both. What you’ve just said, I think, raises quite a fundamental question, which is, is it fear, is it anger, is it what you called visceral emotion, that will drive change? Or is it hope? Now only in the last few days we’ve seen the Prince of Wales talking about the importance of hope when it comes to climate change, and he would see himself – I think the King would see himself – as somebody who’s argued passionately for change; and my guess is privately they’d say “Come on Roger, I mean if you scare the pants off people, that’s not going to work at all”. What do you say to people who say that?

RH: I say that you are not being true to yourself if you engage in utilitarian like distractions, at this stage.

NR: What, hope is a utilitarian distraction?

RH: What I’m saying is – I know you don’t believe me, but I’m just going to assert it again – that I am not coming into this interview, like, with a whole bunch of moves. I’m coming in to say something that’s fundamentally truthful. When I helped to inititate Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, my fundamental rule is to say the truth and to act as if it’s real. That was the foundation, and if you want my analysis on why Extinction Rebellion was so successful, it was because the founders were not interested in being successful. They were interested in telling the truth, that’s a completely different logic.

NR: I understand that as a motive, but it is also the case that having studied successful civil resistance and protest movements, you came up with, I think – maybe it came from someone else – a theory of 3.5%, an idea of how many people needed to resist in society to make a difference. Just talk us through the mindest, if you would.

RH: If you, if you study the history of civil disobedience, as I have, the starting point, right, the starting point of the power of civil disobedience movements is the decision to act on the truth, like, not a post-modernist version of the truth, not like “Oh there’s Roger’s truth and someone else’s truth” right. We know ultimately you can’t say what the truth is, but for practical circumstances, if someone murder’s your offspring, and someone says “Oh well, it’s just a matter of your opinion”, you’re not going to be very impressed. You know, you, your daughter or son is dead. It’s dead. It’s an objective reality. What we’re dealing with here is the objective reality of physics. So if you put more carbon into the atmosphere, and we allow the elites to do that, then billions of people will die, you know. Maybe six billion, maybe three million, billion, but it’s an obscene discussion, and I don’t want to go there, right.

NR: Yeah, and I don’t want to have an argument about it. I’m not a scientist, you’re not a scientist, and we don’t know, it’s a forecast.

RH: What you need to understand is this is a unique moment in human history. We can look at, we can look at civil resistance like, you know, in various other contexts, but this is totally new.

NR: Sure. What I’m interested in is what you are saying – and you are talking to people via this podcast and programme – is necessary to make that change. You’re telling them that you want them to join in with civil resistance. You’re saying – sometimes to people who’ve never been on a protest in their life – I’d like you to get arrested if you’re willing to be arrested, I’d like you to go to prison. What I’m asking you is, how is that going to change the thing that you say is so frightening?

RH: Well, the first thing to say about disruption is, you know, I’m interviewd a lot about this question, and as far as I’m concerned it’s a bad faith question, right, it’s a cynical question, and the reason it’s a cynical question “Why disrupt, Roger?” is everyone disrupts.

NR: I’m not asking you why you disrupt. I am asking you to explain to people who you want to disrupt, how it will work….

RH: …This is why I say to people, you know…

NR: …We will come to whether this is counter-productive, how will it work…

RH: …This is what I say to people, people say “Oh, why should we engage in disruption, why should we engage in civil disobedience to the point of arrest?” and what I say is you’re being dishonest with yourself, right, the reason you’re being dishonest with yourself is that if you have values, and those values are disrupted, everyone disrupts. Historically, right-wing people disrupt, left-wing people disrupt, the determining factor is are you utterly horrified by a social development such that you cannot live with yourself and not engage in disrupting your society? Ultimately disruption is war, right, you know, there’s very few people that would argue that disrupting Hitler was a bad idea, otherwise known as World War Two, right, so you can work back from that, and what I’m saying here is if you have someone come in to your interview and say a billion people are going to be killed, that’s a no-brainer, right, that’s twenty World War Twos.

NR: Ah, but I’m interested, you said disruption is war, it’s a war against who?

RH: It’s a war against those people who are engaging in mass murder.

NR: Who are they?

RH: The global elites.

NR: But who are they? I mean, it’s a phrase.

RH: Well, practically speaking , in this country it means the UK government and the forces behind the UK government. But the UK government has a constitutional responsibility as the people that control the British state…

NR: …Now, after you and your supporters occupied the streets, particularly of London, in 2019, after what, a thousand-odd people got arrested, the UK government not only listened – er, they would no doubt deny there was a direct link to the declaration of a climate emergency – but they did declare a climate emergency in Parliament, also some of your representatives – not you – got to meet with Michael Gove, who was then the Environment Secretary, did it feel to you like a moment where Wow, these people are, they are actually listening?

RH: Well, this is a really mind-numbingly stupid question, right, OK, one billion people….

NR: …We can swap if you like, you can do my job and I’ll do yours…

RH: …With all due respect, right…

NR: …I love the addition of “With all due respect”. That makes it feel a lot better….

RH: …It’s a mind-numbingly stupid question, is, is, and this comes back to emotional, like, connection, right, I mean I’ve got no expectation of you motionally connecting, right, with what I’ve just said, ‘cos you’re part of that system, that isn’t able to connect. When I’m, when I’m coming on to this programme….

NR: …I’m paid not to take the side of people who are in front of me to be interviewed…..

RH: ….Exactly, exactly, you’re paid, but also it’s part of the culture, the psycopathic culture of the British elite, is just not to connect with the emotional reality of what’s going to be imposed on the British people…

NR: ….But just get to why, why – I don’t wish to invite you to endlessly repeat how stupid I am – but why is it not a sensible question to say did you feel then you were getting somewhere? And do you not feel now….

RH: …What I’m trying to say is the pretence that the British establishment is taking seriously its resonsibilities is self-evidently ridiculous, given the gravity of what we face…

NR: ….But did it feel that way then, or was there a moment you thought – not for a second that you’d won: of course not – but. We’re shifting things. We’re moving things, things are changing….

RH: …Yes, there was a moment when the British establishment – the political class of this country – had the opportunity to fulfil it’s most grave obligations towards the British nation, the British people, and it utterly failed.

NR: That was in 2019…

RH: …That was in 2019, when there was [sic] ten thousand people on the streets of London, and it was an opportunity, right, that was a very graceful, very well-organised, very peaceful protest, as everyone knows. I spoke to the head police officer afterwards and he said he’d never known such a big congregation of people doing civil disobedience that had ever led to no police officer having any injury at all.

NR: Well, I remember being on Waterloo Bridge as a reporter, and it was something like…

RH: …So this was an opportunity, this was an opportunity…

NR: …It wasn’t much of a party if you really couldn’t get across the bridge and had important jobs to do, of course, but it was a party for those who were on the bridge. It was an opportunity missed. That meant that you changed your approach. You adopted different tactics, tactics which led you to fall out even with your own daughter at one point.

RH: Yes. So, I think the next question you should be asking…

NR: …Can I ask the quation I want to ask, then you can ask me the question that I’m meant to ask, OK? You fell out with your daughter, she said, and indeed she threatened to walk out of Extinction Rebellion unless you left it…

RH: …No…

NR: …There’s a documentary that shows that happening….

RH: …I don’t want to answer that question because I don’t think it’s that important, right, what the important question, I mean, you can ask me questions, and I can choose whether to answer them, right…

NR: …No no, let me put it another way, and then you can tell me, er OK you don’t want to talk about the personal thing, but there was an argument, wasn’t there, about whether you could keep the party atmosphere of Extinction Rebellion going, if you like, or whether you actually had to harden up, which you wanted to do with causing disruption at Heathrow. And it led eventually yo Just Stop Oil.

RH: It did, but that’s not what’s important in a half hour interview. What’s important in this half hour interview…

NR: …I’ll give you more time if you want…

RH: …OK, what’s important in this half hour interview is to focus on the patholgy of the British establishment in its treasonous inability to understand politically, emotionally, what is coming down the line, right. This is what’s avoided over and over again by the media, right, it’s this focus on the civil disobedience, to focus on this movement. This movement is not important. Civil disobedience is not important, right. What’s important is for the audience to discuss and be aware of this utter betrayal of our fundamental rights. The most fundamental right in this country is the right to livelihood and a life. And what we have down here is overwhelming scientific evidence that the people of this country are going to be liable to starve to death in the next half century.

NR: Well, this is….

RH: …That’s a substantive probability…

NR: …This is not just an argument about tactis, if you’ll forgive me, which I know you think is trivial compared with the scale of what we face. It is an argument whether, if I give you the whole half hour to simply repeat how many people are going to die, and how awful it’s going to be, in one pamphlet you wrote at one stage you talked about mass rape. Is that going to work? Because you’re somebody who’s interested in what ultimately will work, and there are plenty of people in the old Extinction Rebellion movement, outside the movement, going “it doesn’t work, it alienates people, it turns them off”. People want hope.

RH: Well, as I expected, you haven’t listened to me….

NR: …I think I have, actually….

RH: ….I have tried to make it clear several times that I am not primarily (pause) I am not primarily motivated by what works, right. What I’m primarily motivated by is, in a fairly inadequate way, obviously, because I’m human, is delivery of a good life, so that when I’m on my death bed I feel like I had some integrity at a time when society was heading for the most catastrophic collapse in the human story…

NR: Forgive me, that sounds – which I’m surprised by, genuinely – that sounds like you’ve almost given up. It’s “How do I live with myself before my maker?”, and your mother was a Methodist preacher, and it’s clear that religion played quite an important part in shaping the person that you are in your youth. It sounds as if you’ve….

RH; …It doesn’t mean…

NR: …given up…

RH: …It doesn’t mean I’ve given up, it doesn’t mean I haven’t given up, right, it’s just not thinking that question’s important…

NR: …Yeah. Are you still motivated, I mean that’s a deep question you’ve asked about whether you can live with yourself and your sense of whether you’ve lived a good life. Were you shaped, are you shaped a lot by the values and experiences that you had at home?

RH: I think what I’m primarily shaped by is my understanding of what people do when they are presented with a catastrophic future, a catastophic present even. And what we know, and what we feel in our veins obviously when this happens to us, assuming we’re open to it, is the questions of whether we’re actually going to make it or not are not the most important questions. The questions that I hope many of your audience are asking is, I [garbled – have been?] presented with overwhelming evidence of a catastrophic future for my children. What’s my responsibility to my children? It’s not like what’s my responsibilities to my children…

NR: …Ok, what is that responsibility, no, no, understood, cos you’ve said that. What is it you think is their responsibility because the danger with any discussion about politics is individuals think “well, there’s a great limit to what I can do, what difference I make, it’s not up to me. There are forces beyond my control.” So if there’s someone listening or watching now and says “Ok, I’ve heard that. He’s right”. What is it they can do?

RH: Well, first of all this is not politics, right. This is one of the biggest problems with how we frame all of this. And one of the reasons why people are so confused. They think that climate change – you’ll notice I haven’t used those words, right – they think that climate change is as you said at the beginning, is n issue, it’s a thing, it’s on the agenda, there’s [sic] policies. You know, it’s got to be fitted in with our obsession for economic growth and all of the rest of it, right. That’s not what’s going on here, right. What’s going on here is the imposition of evil into our lives. Evil is something beyond politics. What evil is is a scheme of creating mass death…

NR: …Yeah, but you’re still not answering the question, which is, the person who’s listening, and has heard what you’ve said, and has woken up emtionally in the way you think I have not, and they say “I’m going to do something. What does Roger Hallam want me to do?”

RH: This is, this is, the framing of how I hope and wish that people listening to this will adopt, right, cos as soon as we feel like it’s politics, then we go into this utilitarian “does this work, what should I do, I’ve got to go on holiday that month, you know, how can I negotiate all my other elements of my life”, right…

NR: …But the floor is yours. I’ve just asked you, what do you want them to do?…

RH: …I know, I’m getting to it. I’m saying on the basis of understanding what it actually is, right, that it is an evil situation, in total seriousness. I’m not talking science fiction novels here, I’m talking about Hitler, you know, the Holocaust, I’m talking about Cambodia, I’m talking about what happened in Congo, this is a beyond serious situation, right. If the AMOC, if the AMOC current, as you may know, right, collapses before 2050 – that’s one headline in the newspapers – the British people will starve.

NR: Yeah. I’ve very deliberately not had an argument with you about the science or the numbers, but I am going to say – because I think it’s right to say – there areplenty of people who will say it’s nothing like the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a deliberate industrial, industrialised destruction of a people, and climate change, you think, is the responsibility of an elite. You slightly dodged the question when I said “Was it deliberate?” – you sort of suggested it was a kind of verbal game – but it is not therefore the same as Pol Pot massacreing people for who they are.

RH: It’s worse. And the reason it’s worse is because of the scale, right.

NR: Yeah, but motive matters when people are doing it…

RH: …Motive matters, motive matters, absolutely. Don’t get me wrong, right. What happened in the Holocaust was an obscenity beyond words because there was a direct motive to kill. But as you well know, right, and as any legal person would say is, there’s [sic] two elements to a crime, right. There’s the scale of the crime and there’s the intentionality. And the intentionality is in the mid-ground as it were. It’s not like they didn’t know, they didn’t have the information. They do know, and they do have the information, and they’re prepared for people to die. But admittedly…

NR: …Let’s go back to what….

RH: …Let’s just deal with this issue, right. Admittedly noone’s pretending the elites want to kill the poor of this world just because they’re poor…

NR: …OK…

RH: …But. Let me just finish….

NR: …All right…

RH: …But, I’ve just told you there’s [sic] a billion people according to peer-reviewed papers – and I could come in with a whole bunch of other ones – and people on this programme…

NR: …You’ve shared quite a few different numbers in this interview, but anyway…

RH: …Let’s fo for one billion people, right. That’s twenty times the number of people that were killed in World War Two. That’s why it’s worse…

NR: …Forgive me. I know my audience reasonably well. I think they’re at the – listening to this, watching – they’re interested in what you’re saying. They’re saying “What does Roger Hallam want me to do?” and then what does the Government do – we’ve still got to come on to that…

RH: …OK, we’re coming on to that. Yeah, yeah, yes.

NR: So, what do people do, first of all? Now, do you want them – and do you think this would make the difference – to join the ranks of people, say in Just Stop Oil, for example, direct protests, whether it’s kind of throwing things at paintings, whether it’s lying down in the streets. Is that what’s going to bring about the change?

RH: There’s, there’s a fundamental decision, and then there’s a degree of practicality with any fundamental decision, right. In the real world there’s a degree of practicality. The fundamental decision is to emotionally connect with the criminality of what is happening on the basis of what is said. Therefore you have no choice. You have no choice morally not to enter into resistance against the British Government at this time because of the intensity and extent of the horror that’s coming down the line.

NR: To be clear what you mean by resistance. You’ve basically talked about going to prison. If you’re not in prison, you’re not resisting, is what you said at one stage…

RH: …Yes, well I’m coming on to that. So, there’s a practical, there’s a practical side to that. There’s a practical side to what resistance means, right. Resistance is a foreign notion to most people listening to this, no doubt. But it’s not, like, impossible to get youur head round. People resist all the time on different levels, right. What we’re practically talking about here is mass civil disobedience in the UK context. And as a pathway – which is Just Stop Oil, and dare I say it, people can go onto the website, it takes two minutes and you get into the system, and they will tell you what you can and can’t do and all the rest of it, right. The fundamenatal point is, is that in order to create the change that we need in the time that we’ve got, we have no choice other than to engage in mass civil disobedience.

NR: And you believe that will make a difference? How?

RH: It’s not a matter of whether it makes a difference or not. Obviously, by definition civil disobedience makes a difference. The question is, is it at a scale which will tip a western democratic government into enacting climate policies in the first instance?

NR: But then there is a practical question, which I think it’s entirely fair to ask you, which is, you got thousands onto the streets in 2019. Since then, we’re taling of small-scale resistance, and unless you get many more than the ten thousand you had before, it’s not going to happen, is it, what you want to happen? Governments are not going to quake. They are not going to dramatically change their policies. So, are you anywhere close to that?

RH: We may be, we may be not. And the reason I’m saying that is not because I’m trying to avoid your question, right? It’s very difficult to predict, because….

NR: …Did you know before 2019, in other words, was there a moment you thought “My God, this is going to happen. We are now not getting just a few hundred…”

RH: …Yeah, I said, I said to Extinction Rebellion, if tens of thousands of people go to London, there will be a result, right. That was my prediction on the basis of a study that I’d had. But one of the things about being in this work, as it were, is, is that it’s very difficult to predict whether those people tip over to saying “I’m going to have to act, because I cannot not act”, right. And they may, and they may not. And if they do, then we’ve got a chance of saving what’s left to save. And if we don’t, then we’re heading into this mass starvation scenario…

NR: …It often takes something very immediate, very personal to tip people into action. Now in your case it was as a farmer seeing what the climate was doing to your farm.

RH: I think actually it’s not that much about what’s actually happened to you, for most people. I think for most people, most people who enter this, this situation and say “I cannot live without acting”, it’s due to an involuntary feeling of horror.

NR: Humour me by answering one question, just for the sheer hell of it, we could do that. Erm, your farm failed. And it as one of the things that made you think “there’s something I now need to do something about”.

RH: Yes. There’s [sic] hundreds of millions of farmers [sic] around the world who’ve had the same experience as me, which is the trauma – and it is a trauma – of finding out that the weather systems are not going to enable them to grow the crops they wanted to grow. Right. It’s a financial disaster for them, but it’s also an emotional disaster, cos they lose control of their lives. You know, you’ve got a nice, calm sort of life, dare I say, you know, you don’t have to worry this studio exists every time you go to work…

NR: …No, that’s true…

RH: …If you’re a farmer, you can be the best farmer in the world, but if it rains every day for seven weeks, a hundred per cent of your crops are going to die. You know, if it’s minus 20 in the winter, you’re going to lose all your winter crops. The fact that it’s a one in a thousand year event is no solace to you. You’re losing your livelihood.

NR: But did that feel to you, when that happened to you, like a moment?

RH: It was a moment of making real what is going to happen…

NR: …So something you knew intellectually, but seeing…

RH: …Exactly. This is the problem, right, and this is why civil resistance works, because we can have as nice a chat as we like, and, you know, I can do lots of interviews, nothing’s going to change. What’s going to change is the emotion of finding people getting dragged off the street, put into prison, on a mass scale. Students crying on motorways, right. This is how change works. It doesn’t change, with all due respect, right, we’ve got plenty of time, right, for an intellectual discussion, dare I say, you know I’m not a researcher at King’s College. But at this moment it’s an obscenity to just come on a show and say well, let’s, you know, let’s discuss this as if it’s over there. It’s not. It’s in, it’s in your stomach, Nick, right…

NR: …Yeah, and in your case it’s in your stomach enough for you to go to prison, what twice, three times?

RH: People go, people go to prison all round the world through civil resistance. There’s nothing particularly peculiar about that…

NR: …Ah, no, but there may be people in jail unlike you who say “For me, that is a hell of a thing to risk doing”, either because they’re personally frightened of it, or they’re worried what it’ll mean for their family, or how they’re seen in society, their job, their ability to earn a living, so it is a big thing…

RH: …The big thing is what’s going to happen to us. That’s, that’s…

NR: …You’ve no words of comfort for them on, don’t worry about going to prison, it’s just, this is…

RH: …There’s no…

NR: …It’s just, this is so important, you’ve just got to do it…

RH: …I have, I have no words of comfort, right. Let me say that again. I have no words of comfort for your audience. What I’m saying to you and your audience is, get real. Right. This is not the time to look for comfort. It’s the time to actually understand how totally terrible this situation is, and to act accordingly. That’s your duty, right, as a parent, as a citizen, and as a human being.

NR: Some people will be inspired by what you say. Other people will be terrified, thinking “If he is so clear about this in his mind, he’ll stop at nothing.” It’s not just inconvenience, it’s not just civil disobedience, what would it be?

RH: What I’m clear about is what’s clear. OK? [Laughs.] Objectively clear, which is there’s a thing out there called physics, right…

NR: …Yeah, no but I’m asking you whether there’s any limits to this.

RH: The limits to what you do?

NR: Yeah.

RH: We have to engage in civil disobedience, civil resistance, to the point that we fundamentally change the regime, right – the regime of digging fossil fuels out of, out of the ground. I don’t know quite what that looks like, and I don’t need to, right. You don’t need to have all the information to act. What you have to have is the visceral horror of what’s happening. And what we need to do is in November, is go down to London and engage in civil disobedience, cos that’s our best bet. No-one’s pretending it’s going to be successful. No-one’s pretending that Just Stop Oil is necessarily the best thing ever, right. But that’s what, that’s the opportunity your viewers have. And it’s the opportunity, dare I say it, for you and also all these people, right, OK?

NR: What, the ones behind the glass who are pressing the buttons and my producers…

RH: …Yes, every, it’s the opportunity. No, don’t smile about this, it’s very serious, right. This is the opportunity for you at the BBC to fulfil your duty to the British people, which is to say to the British government you will no longer co-operate with a genocidal regime.

NR: Yeah, no it’s not the duty of the BBC to do any such thing…

RH: …It is, it absolutely is…

NR: …Well it might be in your mind…

RH: …Because what we’re talking about, what we’re talking about…

NR: …It’s my duty…tell us what’s happening in November, cos we don’t know what’s happening in November…

RH: …No, no, no, no, I’m not letting you go on that. What we’re talking about here is treason against the British people…

NR: …You’re applying for a job? Now, what is happening in November? You’ve told people you want them to come to London in November, but I don’t know, they don’t know, what it is you’re talking about.

RH: What I want to say to your audience is, is, your reaction over the last two minutes is symptomatic of why they’re being betrayed, right. Your belittling of your responsibility, and these people, to actually make a concrete step to save our country. And you will suffer the consequences of it in the next decade…

NR: …I’m suffering in this interview at the moment. Now what is happening in November that you think people should do?…

RH: …No, what I want to say to your audience is, you will be taken, you will be taken to Court. You will be taken to Court…

NR: …Who will be?

RH: You will be…

NR: …Oh, me personally, right….

RH: …as a member of the British establishment. You need to take this seriously.

NR: I’m going to be taken to Court for what?

RH: You’re, absolutely, you will be taken to Court…

NR: …For what, for what?…

RH: …as a member of the British establishment, for betraying the British people during the two thousand and twenties…

NR: …But what will I be guilty of?

RH: You need to think about….You will be guilty of treason. This is a, a pregnant moment of potentiality, right, for people in the establishment to decide what they want to do.

NR: In the meantime, you invited people to go to London in November. Can you tell us more? What is it you’re hoping will happen then?

RH: There’s a website. Just Stop Oil. There’s various other websites. It’s easy. If you’re in the audience you go on the website, you sign up, and a whole bunch of practical details, right…

NR: …Yeah…

RH: …The fundamental point is, is making that decision to enter into that process. You don’t need to make that decision, ultimately, by getting involved in the process. The thousands and thousands of people in this country who’ve engaged in civil disobedience, they enter the process with a lot of fear, trepidation, but they’re driven to do it, and they go through a series of steps, right. And they’re supported in those steps by other people that have had a similar experience of fear and trepidation…

NR: …Understood…

RH: …Right, that’s the process.

NR: Now, over the course of this conversation, er, you’ve told me how frightening it is, what’s gonna happen. You’ve accused me of not doing enough, of not being stirred emotionally to do enough about it. You’ve got to address, I think, don’t you, the people who just say “I don’t want to be hectored and harangued and terrified. I want to be persuaded by cogent arguments about what will change and how it will change and what will make a difference”. To those who think that do you think they’re just missing the point?

RH: Yes.

NR: But they’re your audience.

RH: No. The audience is the 1% of the population. Civil resistance and social change happens [sic] when 1% of the population decides that they have been morally violated to the point that they engage in resistance.

NR: Now we’re getting to the point. So in a sense, all those people – and you know them well – who say “Why the hell’s he disrupting our lives? Why are they disrupting our lives, by occupying a road, or why are they ruining some beautiful piece of art by throwing soup or dye at it?” your point is it doesn’t really matter what 999 people out of a thousand think…

RH: …What matters….

NR: …We need the one to come out and fight…

RH: …No. No no no. No no no. What matters in this life is whether you vilate your core values, which are objective. It’s whether you violate your children, you violate your community, and you violate your country. Those are like trans-cultural norms, right, going back ten thousand years. And what I’m saying is, is when a culture, like the culture you’re part of, right, violate those norms, it’s not a matter of whether you like it, whether you want to be persuaded, right. That’s like, it’s a stupid, it’s a stupid response because you have to grow up and realise sometimes in life you have to make an act. You have to make a decision, right. Just as when you decide to defend your children’s lives or you defend your country. You don’t sit there and analyse it, right. Obviously, obviously there’s a place when you’re engaged in that process of confrontation and resistance for looking at tactics and all the rest of it. But that’s not, that’s not what we need to discuss on this programme…

NR: …Mm, but you do end up discussing it and it obviously matters whether it’s working or not…

RH: …What we need to discuss….sure, if you give me, if you give me ten programmes, I’m more than happy to spend half an hour…

NR: …Well you’ve had quite a lot of time already. Does it matter, therefore, that six in ten, even of people who’ve protested, said disruptive protesting hinders rather than helps the cause. Does that matter?

RH: No. No, for the reasons I’ve just said.

NR: So, in a way “to hell with them”. As long as you’ve stirred one person out of a hundred on this programme…

RH: …No…

NR: …you’ve succeeded…

RH: …No, you’re totally misrepresenting what I’m saying. It’s not a strategy. It’s not like, oh those people don’t matter cos we’re just going for those, that one per cent, right. We’re not going for anything. We’re making a statement, right. We’re making a statement to eternity about the sort of people we are. That’s a completely different universe, right, of mental activity. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?

NR: I do.

RH: I’m trying to say there’s something totally unacceptable about the situation we’re in…

NR: …No, I do understand it. I just want to end on this, if we may, cos I hear your – I think it’s anger, isn’t it? – is it fair to describe it as anger? It’s not frustration…

RH: …I am utterly, utterly infuriated…

NR: …Yes. Look. And I’m aware that occasionally – because we’re having a civilised conversation – that I’ve smiled and you’ve found it annoying….

RH: …Because, because. Of course I find you annoying. I find, I find everything about the British establishment disgusting….

NR: …Yeah, OK, well we’re clear about that…

RH: …I’m saying that, as a, as an ordinary….

NR: …Understood….

RH: …farmer in this country. I spent twenty years doing my part of the bargain, which is producing food, running a business, doing my bit…

NR: …But I’m entitled therefore, Roger, to go back to what I asked you before. You couldn’t even persuade your own daughter of this. She thought you’d got it wrong. She thought your tactics were counter-productive. She walked out of Extinction Rebellion. If you can’t persuade her…

RH: …That’s a cheap shot, as you know…

NR: …Why is it cheap?

RH: It’s a hard talk point, right. As you said, you said to me, you weren’t going to use that sort of routine on me, right….

NR: …But hold on, you’ve just accused me of being complicit with genocide…

RH: …For the record, for the record, for the record, she’s fully supportive, as it happens, right…

NR: …Well, she wasn’t…

RH: …That’s not, that’s not the point, is it? The point is, Nick, is what are you going to do to have integrity in your life, right. What are these people going to do…

NR: …I will reflect on how I have integrity in my life, if you’ll forgive me, not with a complete stranger who I’ve only just met. I’m paid to ask you questions….

RH: …You’ve had, you’ve had thirty years, right…

NR: …Yeah…

RH: …You and your generation have had thirty years to look at this information. And what you’ve chosen to do is have a quiet life, right. And Hell’s coming down the road because you didn’t act in time, right. It’s not my job as a farmer to do this, is the political establishment’s job. You’ve got lots of privilege. You earn lots of money. I don’t have a problem with that, right. There’s a nice guy in there. What are you all doing? What are you all doing?

NR: You’re not merely a farmer, Roger Hallam, are you? You’re a political organiser, you’re a strategist…

RH: …I explained that, because you didn’t do youur job. I would love to be weeding carrots, right. The reason I’m in this studio…

NR: …I’d love to be asking questions that get answered, but we don’t always get to do what we want….

RH: …No…

NR: …And that’s it…

RH: …And that’s the problem, isn’t it? That’s the problem.

NR: Are you a depressive? Isn’t this the problem?

RH: [Laughs]

NR: No?

RH: …Let me finish on this, right….

NR: …No, I mean, I don’t mean, I’m not intruding into your…

RH: …No no no…

NR: …personal life. What I mean is….

RH: …Let me tell you what the other side of the world is – a world that you cannot see, right. Because that’s one of the reasons you don’t ant to go to the, this other world, right. There’s another world out there, which is a world of acting on your fundamental beliefs. When you act on your fundamental beliefs you experience a certain ecstasy, right. There’s a certain glory in it, right. Which is invisible to the political elite, because that’s why you’re so terrified. That’s why, that’s why you won’t act, because you don’t understand as I see it, that there’s a different way to live one’s life, right. And you project, you project…

NR: …I’m intrigued, that you experience…no, let’s not talk about me, we’ve done enough of that…

RH: …No no no…

NR: …But do you feel…Honestly. You’ve had a lot of time to accuse me of all sorts of things. Are you saying that you – and you hope your supporters – feel a kind of ecstasy…

RH: …There’s not a matter, there’s not a matter of, there’s not a matter of, of, what I want them to do. I’m. I’m being straight with you, right…

NR: …No. I’m just asking you to describe…

RH: …Yes. So let me say quite clearly, right. Many – and not all, not all, not all times – when people are put into a cell in a police station they have a sense of peace, a profound sense of peace. This is an involuntary experience, right. You know, because they’re going into the, they’re going into the police station terrified, right, if it’s the first time. And then they’re put in a cell. You’d expect them to be terrified. And often they are. But, but, and, at the same time they have a sense of peace, right. This is a spiritual phenomenon, which is when people stand up against evil, there’s a release. There’s not a tension any more. There’s not that, that violation of your core self. And when you go into resistance, you suddenly feel like you’ve rediscovered your integrity. You’ve rediscovered the essence of what, what you think you are. You return to yourself, right. This is a universal phenomenon when people stand against evil historically. And that’s what I’m saying to your audience is this is not like an accounting cost-benefit analysis, right. It’s an invitation to be who you already are, right. It’s a, it’s an invitation to come back to what you already are, which is a fundamentally decent person.

NR: This is the Zen of protest? The Zen of standing up to what you insist is evil.

RH: It’s, it’s something that people experience. You can give it fancy religious words if you like. I don’t mind, right, you know. Maybe it’s Christian, maybe it’s…the fundamental point I’m trying to say here, right, is that you can feel joy, you can feel wholeness, and you can feel connection when you enter into this resistance orientation. And it’s not despite entering into it. It’s because you do, because you return to some sense of wholeness.

NR: You, you talked about that belief – even hope, I think – that you had in 2019, that there was a moment of change that looked possible, briefly. A moment that was dashed, rejected in your view. Do you see another in your lifetime? Do you still have hope?

RH: I have twenty more years of my life, and each day I get up and I endeavour to be the good person that I want to be. And what that means in the present context is to be in civil resistance against the genocisal British government. That’s it, right.

NR: Roger Hallam, thank you for joining me on Political Thinking.

NR: Well, that certainly challenged my politicial thinking. I wasn’t sure whether he was interviewing me or I was interviewing him at times. I Usually approach these interviews with some sort of rough plan, some rough structure. I even try to help the guest by giving them a sense of what we will talk about, and what we won’t, to try to relax them. I did that with Roger Hallam, and he threw that out of the window. And I threw my notes and my structure out of the window too. But I hope it was still a revealing conversation about what motivates him, and what he believes might work to bring about political change. He’s not interested in coaxing, he’s not interested in wooing, he’s not interested in any of the conventional tactics of political discourse. He believes that shock and anger and emotion, and ultimately civil disobedience leading, yes, to a willingness to go to prison is all that will change what he refers to as the regime. And he doesn’t just mean this or any other government. He means what he sees as the elite, are finally forced to change. And, yeah, I’ve been told, apparently I’m part of that elite, and I might go to Court for treason. Memorable interview, wasn’t it?