Slavery? It’s more like a holiday camp with ping-pong and discos
Flower pickers ‘rescued’ by police have heated caravans and return to farm each year
With ping-pong tables, video room, heated caravans and free internet, this farm could almost be a holiday resort.
So it’s little wonder these Eastern European daffodil pickers were shocked to see their bosses arrested in a police ‘modern slavery’ raid last week.
the operation backfired as workers who had been ‘rescued’ instead asked police to let them get back to work at Rh Scrimshaw and Sons in Manaccan, Cornwall.
And the farm is now struggling to pay the workers because more than £10,000 in cash for wages was seized by officers.
Owners Allen Scrimshaw, 68, his son Wolfe, 41, were arrested on thursday and released under investigation, along with Lithuanian fork lift driver Robertas, 49.
About 200 pickers were questioned – but only 14 chose not to return to the job which can pay £240 a day.
Allen, who retired ten years ago, said he spent ten hours in a cell at Camborne police station after he was handcuffed at the farm’s office.
Wolfe was arrested at the home he shares with his wife and three children at about 6am. Allen said: ‘We are all very shaken up. My son is just walking around in a daydream.
‘he hasn’t eaten a thing since he was arrested. My wife is totally devastated by this. the idea that we are slavers is a complete joke.’
the Lithuanian and Romanian workers are paid 8p per bunch and either receive their money daily or leave a record of their earnings with the Scrimshaws to collect later. But as well as cash, police also seized three computers used to track how much each picker was owed.
Allen said: ‘they said they thought i was laundering it, but my wife told them it wasn’t for me it was for the workers. that’s the irony – now the people police claimed to be helping can’t get paid because they’ve seized all this cash.’
About 100 workers drove to the police station to protest their bosses’ arrests. ‘ More wanted to come apparently but there weren’t enough minibuses,’ Allen added.
he said the 12 men and two women who ‘ elected to seek help’ had not raised any issues, adding: ‘We aren’t angels, i know, but we do try to look after them all as best we can. Up to about ten years ago we would have British workers do the picking, but no one from this country wants to do this sort of work any more.
‘My son took over about ten years ago and wanted to expand and the only way he could do that was to import foreign labour.’
the daffodil farm is one of the UK’s largest, with about 60million stems every season. Lithuanian Marius Alsauskas, 25, is back for his ninth year with his father, brother-in-law and 50-year-old mother, who is back for her 11th season. ‘it’s good money for me and i need to earn it to send home to my pregnant wife and threeyear-old daughter,’ he said.
‘Yesterday i earned more than £110, the picking was okay, not great.
‘We don’t understand why [the arrests] happened because if it’s bad you can just leave. Of course we
We aren’t slaves... give us our jobs back!
aren’t slaves kept here, we’re workers. In Lithuania it is very hard to find work, and it is bad money and very hard jobs. I earn in a day here what I would in a week at home.
‘Field work is hard, it is not sitting in front of a computer, and you have to do it to o get paid. I think the 14 who left didn’t want to work this hard.’
The pickers live in 45 on-site e caravans which are heated by y gas cylinders they buy themselves. Each pays £35 rent a week, but on days when the weather is too bad to pick k they are not charged for r accommodation.
Their common room has pool ol tables and ping-pong. There re are even parties and discos in n the recreation room, which has as a permanent disco light. Mr Scrimshaw said: ‘We sometimes een give them alcohol when they have the next day off.’
The workers stay from January uen 1 to the end of March, then either return home or look for or other farm work in the UK.
English farm-hand Virginia nia Platt, 51, has worked there for 28 years and lives in a caravan near ear the pickers with her daughter. r.
She said: ‘Obviously something mead was said and [police] had to follow it up, but I do wonder der if it had to be such a large operation era and it seems rather a waste of taxpayers’ money to send in so many officers to do oa a raid when a look around would uld tell you things are relatively ely comfortable. There were about ut 100 of them here.’
Devon and Cornwall Chief ief Constable Shaun Sawyer said: id: ‘There were reports in to police ice of alleged offences of modern rn slavery. There comes a point nt where we have to intervene.’