THREE men lay dead in a Worcestershire onion field yesterday, victims of an accident which highlights the stranglehold that “gangmasters” have on the British harvest.

At just after 8.20am a white Ford Transit minibus carrying nine Arab immigrants collided with a train at an unmanned level crossing.

The men, including a number of Iraqi Kurds, had already travelled for an hour to the spring onion field on the banks of the Avon, bused in from Birmingham under instructions from their gangmaster. It is a human traffic that is endemic in Britain, according to a Commons Rural Affairs Select Committee report on the problem last May. They accused the supermarkets of encouraging malpractice by paying too little for legitimate suppliers to afford a legal workforce.

The minibus was carrying workers employed by Simms and Woods to pick onions at Whitehouse Farm in the Vale of Evesham that were destined for supermarkets. The company has employed gangmasters to supply migrant labour for years as British workers are difficult to find on minimal agricultural wages.

But as the driver made his way up the unmade track at Whitehouse Farm, in the village of Charlton near Evesham, he apparently failed to heed the large sign in front of the crossing gate, telling him to stop and call the signaller to ensure that the track was safe.

Police are investigating what the driver was doing on the crossing as Simms and Woods said that there were no crops in need of harvesting on the other side of the track, and also whether language difficulties made it difficult for him to understand the danger sign.

The van collided with the 7.03 train from Hereford to Paddington, killing three men in the van, and seriously injuring three others, including the driver.

Train passengers, who included Peter Luff, Conservative MP for Mid Worcestershire, and the Right Rev John Oliver, the Bishop of Hereford, described feeling a jolt followed by heavy braking. “I thought the train was going to derail after it hit the van but fortunately it stayed on the line and came to an emergency stop about three-quarters of a mile from the crash,” the bishop said.

One passenger was treated at the scene.

Police called in interpreters to try to gather evidence from the survivors in the van. They said that one of their first tasks was to identify the men’s gangmaster in Birmingham.

Gangs of foreign workers from Eastern Europe, Asian countries and the Middle East have replaced the agricultural labourers who once occupied Charlton’s pretty thatched cottages. Local people said that hundreds of itinerant pickers are employed in the area during the growing season, including Indians, Pakistanis and Iraqis. Resentment of the migrant workers in the village has grown since disputes degenerated into open fighting in the fields a few years ago.

James Massingham, a director of Simms and Woods, which has been growing leeks and spring onions at the farm for four years, said that they employed gangmasters to provide labour, but that they were careful to make sure that it was done legally. “The directors and all members of staff at Simms & Woods Ltd would like to express their deepest sympathy to all the families of the victims concerned in today’s tragic accident,” Mr Massingham said.

Between 150 and 300 migrant workers are employed harvesting 120 acres of salad onions at Whitehouse Farm. “We employ gangmasters who are in charge of labour, but they have all been vetted and approved (by a government department) . . . otherwise we wouldn’t use them,” Mr Massingham said. He expressed his “deepest sympathy” to the families of the victims.

The salad onion season runs from March to November, while leeks are harvested from August to March, providing almost year-round employment for many of the casual workers.

But one minibus driver who was driving six workers to the farm from a council estate in Birmingham said that he was an Iraqi asylum-seeker.

“There are many asylum-seekers working here. We all got jobs with an agency in Birmingham. We get paid by them,” he said.

“I know I am not meant to work while my application is being processed, but I just need more money than I am being given.” The man refused to name the agency that he was working for.

Peter Dixon, landlord of the Gardeners Arms in Charlton, said: “No one who lives around here is poor enough to work in the fields and even the seasonal workers who used to come here and pick in their holidays no longer want to do it. Much of the work has been taken over by machines but crops like beans and spring onions need to be picked by hand.

“The immigrants work hard and keep themselves to themselves. We only see them when they arrive in minibuses in the morning and as they leave at night. Very few of them speak English,” he said. “Many of them are Indian who come here and work flat out for three or four months, then go home to their families at the end of the season.” Police confirmed that the men involved in the accident were of Middle Eastern origin but said that they could not confirm whether they were asylum-seekers who were working illegally.

Chief Inspector Colin Edwards, of the British Transport Police, said: “I believe the victims are of Middle Eastern origin, but they may have been of more than one nationality.

“We have not yet been able to establish the name of the agency these people were working for, but that will come out during the course of the investigation.”

He said that initial claims that some people had fled the scene had been investigated and the police were “pretty confident” that everyone had been accounted for.

There have been two near misses at the crossing since 1995. A spokesman for the Rail Safety and Standards Board said: “Since January 1, 1995, there have been two occasions when a train driver reported a near miss with a road vehicle, and a further 15 occasions when misuse of the crossing was reported.”

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