ROGER HALLAM SHOWS HIS TRUE COLOURS: A NOTES FROM THE BORDERLAND EXCLUSIVE

By Heidi Svenson & Larry O’Hara 13.11.25

BACKGROUND

An email popped into the boxes of ‘Assemble’ Supporters yesterday, and the contents, while they did not surprise us, were alarming. No surprise because we have long been wary of Roger Hallam’s involvement in Your Party, and not just disgusted but amazed that we at Notes From the Borderland (and also Ben Timberley to be fair) have been among the few to examine Hallam’s antecedents ideology and role. Not least his past involvement in Just Stop Oil, key constituent of the alphabet soup of front organisations under the ‘Assemble’ banner[1]. We found it staggering, for instance, that on 26/9 Max Shanly and Tina Becker debated the founding of YP on the ‘Why Marx’ You-Tube channel without questioning his good faith, when one at least knew of our concerns[2]. Are we the only people to read and understood his awful book ‘Your Party: Grasping the Enormity of the Moment’? Before outlining our view of last night’s email, we must again draw attention to serious allegations of a rape culture inside Just Stop Oil reported in the online ipaper 27/10/25 (Eleanor Peake/Alexa Phillips[3]) that have been largely ignored. Yet at the very least these allegations raise serious questions about the culture and methodology of JSO, the very methodology Hallam has partly imported into YP. All quotes in bold from Assemble.

LAST NIGHT’S EMAIL

Addressed to inner circle supporters (and still not on the umbrella ‘Assemble’ web-site), the email starts with an ostensibly bland account of Assemble’s dealings with YP. On the one hand, boasting that the YP ‘Roadmap to Conference’ document “mirrored..the Assemble blueprint”—which it did. Hallam (or is it James Schneider?) then revealed “Assemble is not delivering Your Party’s Assembly programme”. Tongue in cheek, it then suggests those “amazing people we trained” should join the YP in-house facilitator training programme. You might wonder, why has Hallam waited over three weeks to suggest this, when there have already been many assemblies, the first (Norwich) was on 19/10/25, which one of us attended and wrote about[4]. The reason for delay soon becomes clear: Hallam’s ‘commitment’ to YP was never sincere, just a mixture of tactical feint and money-grabbing exercise (grifting in the vernacular). For the very next sentence reveals “we’re expanding our own programme of building real change, led by regular citizens like us—not the politicians who serve corporations”. Is not the implication here, which does not need to be explicitly stated, that YP isn’t after real change, and indeed serves corporations? If not the implication, why put this passage in?

THE SNAKE-OIL PROSPECTUS

After exhorting the naïve to jump on board the Assemble Train to Nowhere, we are treated to an account of what Hallam and friends offered YP. I say ‘friends’ advisedly—for the detailed programme and costings fleshed out are highly unlikely to have been his work alone, given he was still in prison till early August, writing the aforementioned book[5]. Anyway, the bullet-points claimed to have been discussed in mid-August 2025 meetings with YP are:

“You can turn 800,000 signups into 3 million members through mass participatory democracy:
Run Assemblies across the UK, listening to what the people want, and make that the foundation of the party.
Use sortition to select some of the delegates for your founding conference.
We will help you to do this”

What needs to be underlined here is this is at best moonshine, at worst deliberate sabotage. As our earlier critique of Hallam’s career shows, he has no proven track record of successful mass organising on this scale, so the numbers promised are just hot air. The idea of basing a party programme solely on Assemblies is, too, hogwash. As Lenin Thatcher & more recently Mamdani have shown, you need to listen to people but also lead, with a coherent ideology and programme. Then there is the fool’s gold of sortition, a malevolent idea one of us is researching in detail: watch this space!

The biggest kick in the nether regions to YP is the last sentence—“we will help you to do this”. For this reactionary spiv, posing as a revolutionary, actually wanted to milk YP for a total £377,235 over a three month period. Yes, you didn’t read the figures wrong: fully half the total money raised and held currently in the Memorandum of Understanding company, now headed by Zarah Sultana alone. And before the Cult of Corbyn say it: Hallam’s proposals were not adopted in full due to a lack of cash, because this money has been repeatedly offered to the cult who have refused it, whatever their spin leaked to sewage outlets the BBC/Guardian. Having said that, Karie Murphy deserves some credit for examining Hallam’s Trojan horse in the mouth and not being fooled.

Building for the Assemblies, training/full-time organisers etc, comprised £260,335 of this total, and (as outlined in his book) would also embed those loyal to Hallam at the heart of YP. And no doubt after three months more cash would be leeched off members. Detailed deconstruction of these proposals can follow elsewhere but worth highlighting one aspect now:

“Local Assemblies to Build the Movement and Feed Into Your Party.

Listening on the Doorstep: “We’re here to hear what you think this new movement-party should be doing”

Question in the Assembly: “What should the new movement-party stand for? Let’s talk about the values that matter to you and what changes would improve your life.”

Door to door surveys and empowering local assemblies could feed into a party structure and conference. Data and donations from assembly campaigns would enable Assemble to build out the movement and support local paid organisers. Over time, local assemblies could develop local charters & mandates, support local election candidates and spark social justice campaigns and mutual aid networks/cooperatives. This will happen regardless, but organising it with care enables a national participatory, grassroots movement to grow around and beyond the party”.

As with other Assembly ideas, this superficially democratic proposal is anything but: for it bypasses the question of participating in national elections collectively and voting for parties now. What if Zohran Mamdani in New York had tried this strategy and just waited for the green shoots to grow, when the paramilitary ICE goons are already on the streets? Closer to home, it is of course verging on the criminal the way those at the centre of YP have refused to empower branches, and allowed the party to be run by the Independent (Mostly) Landlords Alliance, actively preventing local YP members choosing candidates for next May’s elections. For the need to confront Reform/Labour is now, not in some distant future.

The other £116,900 is (or rather was) to be spent on ‘The People Speak’—a mass canvassing project led by (paid) national and regional staff. None of this elaborate structure at scale has ever been tried before, whatever marketing spiel Hallam may have come out with: again see our critique of his track record[6].

WHY ALL THIS DISTURBS US

The first and most obvious point is the vast majority of YP members are and will be people involved because they are committed to the cause: the very idea of getting paid a wage for engaging in such political activity is anathema—to the rank and file at least. Thus, Hallam’s plan to monetise what is for most, and should be, a labour of love quite honestly, is despicable. It does show him to be at best a grasping mountebank.
These proposals have not been leaked now due to a “commitment to transparency and democracy” but to damage YP—“we’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the movement is more important than any party”. The most charitable interpretation is Hallam and company are simply miffed they didn’t get the cash. There are other possibilities.
If Assemble/JSO/Hallam are believers in democracy and transparency, perhaps they could come clean about the rape allegations concerning JSO? Thought not.
There is an important question involving potential conflict of interest. Did James Schneider not only write the YP draft policy documents/constitution but also have involvement in drafting these proposals too? If so was this disclosed? Did he ‘walk away’ voluntarily from YP involvement in August or thereabouts because Assemble didn’t get the cash? Might this be a topic for him on GB News? Thought not.
Speaking of Schneider (and Hallam) this weekend (15-16/11) Hallam’s latest honeytrap for the naïve is an online festival: Online International Festival – Revolution in the 21st Century. Schneider is scheduled to speak (on revolution no less!). Might their commitment to transparency and democracy include both answering relevant questions? What do you think….

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[1] YOUR PARTY STRATEGY: SOME THOUGHTS by Larry O’Hara 24/9/25 – Notes From The Borderland

[2] https://www.facebook.com/LabourLeftAlliance/videos/debating-your-party-what-kind-of-launch-conference-should-we-have/1132367175628569/

[3] Inside Just Stop Oil’s ‘toxic’ culture: Sex assault claims and infighting

[4] ASSEMBLE/DISSEMBLE: THE YOUR PARTY NORWICH ASSEMBLY 19/10/25 by Larry O’Hara 21/10/25 – Notes From The Borderland

[5] Your Party: Grasping The Enormity of The Moment: Amazon.co.uk: Hallam, Roger: 9781068418839: Books

[6] YOUR PARTY STRATEGY: SOME THOUGHTS by Larry O’Hara 24/9/25 – Notes From The Borderland