Animal Rising’s Arla protester Ru Lemer, from Great Hallingbury, remains committed to environmental campaign despite £8,400 court bill

An environmental campaigner from Great Hallingbury is crowdfunding to cover court costs after he and other activists were convicted after a protest.

Ru Lemer, a 29-year-old audio engineer, believes “non-violent direct action is a necessary and proportional response to our current catastrophe”.

He has been involved in environmental protests for five years and was found guilty of conspiracy to commit criminal damage after a three-week trial at St Albans Crown Court.

On September 8, 2022, members of Animal Rising – then known as Animal Rebellion – broke into Arla’s distribution centre in Hatfield.

The Danish-Swedish foods group is the fifth-biggest dairy company in the world and the largest producer of dairy products in Scandinavia and the UK.

Ru was in court with 12 other protesters and represented himself before the judge and jury during the proceedings in May.

During the trial, it was alleged the campaigners caused more than £100,000 damage.

Ru said: “During the action, truck tyres were deflated while protestors waved banners and peace flags. My role was to film the event – I did not cause any damage.”

Last month he was sentenced and given a 15-month community order, a 15-day rehabilitation activity requirement and told to pay compensation.

Ru said: “We were all given a lump sum to pay immediately – calculated as between a third and half of our individual life savings – as well as a monthly payment based on our income. So I’ve had to pay a £7,000 lump sum and then a further £1,400 as £40 per month.

“As a group, we were collectively sentenced to 1,550 hours of unpaid work, 168 months of suspended sentences and £56,875 in compensation.”

In all, Hertfordshire police arrested and charged 14 people with conspiracy to cause criminal damage. One left the country, eight pleaded guilty and five – including Ru – denied the offence.

He does not believe he got a fair hearing in court. “It was unlawful for us to call the protest ‘necessary’ or ‘proportionate’ in front of the jury, and we could have faced prison for doing so,” he said.

“Despite this, I believe that non-violent direct action is a necessary and proportional response to our current catastrophe.

“I’m deeply concerned about the increasing criminalisation of non-violent protest in the UK, with many protestors facing prison sentences and crippling fines, while large corporations and politicians responsible for environmental harm go unpunished.

“I’ve been ordered to attend rehab for 15 months for my ‘lack of victim awareness’ – but I have to ask, who are the victims here? Not the millions of mother cows and calves, or our endangered wildlife losing their habitats? Not the 400 million climate refugees or the projected 250,000 additional deaths per year from climate change?

“No. The victims here are multi-billion-pound companies driving global climate collapse, facing non-violent protesters campaigning for a science-based transition towards more sustainable and ethical practices.”

Ru remains resolute that what he did was right: “This action was part of Animal Rising’s Plant-Based Future campaign.

“There were three aims: to stop the supply of dairy in the UK, to highlight the environmental and ethical issues within the dairy industry and to call on the Government to support farmers in transitioning to a just and sustainable plant-based food system.”

He said there was good evidence that growing, feeding and harvesting large land mammals like cows was an “incredibly inefficient way of feeding a population, and it’s causing massive ecological backlash”.

To support the Arla 13, see https://chuffed.org/project/112448-help-support-the-court-costs-of-the-hatfield-13. The £56,875 appeal has raised £7,667 so far.

After the Animal Rising trial ended, Insp Donna Norris, Hertfordshire Constabulary’s public order crime team lead and senior investigating officer, said: “The sentences passed down by the courts are a culmination of nearly two years’ worth of work in what has been a challenging and complex investigation.

“These 13 defendants turned up at a dairy distribution centre and caused tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage. They were protesting around climate change and animal welfare, and, regardless of your views on the topic, this does not mean you can take the law into your own hands and damage property belonging to others.

“This was a pre-planned incident, with much of it filmed and posted on social media. I hope these sentences will reassure the public that we will deal with matters such as these seriously and that offenders will be brought to justice.”