Shut Up and Listen: How Assemblies Challenge The Political Class - Paperback

The left knows what it's against. But what comes next?

Fresh out of prison, Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain, sits down with journalist Ash Sarkar for a wide-ranging conversation about why progressive politics keeps failing to build mass movements, and what needs to change.

Hallam argues that the central problem is not ideology but method. Too often, the left tells people what to think instead of listening to them. Drawing on decades of organising, social science, historical movements, and his experience of imprisonment, he makes the case for a different model of politics: one built on relationships rather than messaging, assemblies rather than elites, and participation rather than representation.

The conversation explores why working-class communities have drifted away from the left, what prison teaches organisers, the role of sortition and citizens' assemblies, political culture, community organising, and how movements can grow beyond protest into democratic power.

Provocative, challenging and often unexpectedly funny, Shut Up and Listen is a manifesto for anyone asking how to build a movement capable of confronting the crises of the twenty-first century.