ABOUT 1,000 protestors, including Sheerness steel workers and their supporters, stripped down to their underwear today to demand compensation for their lost pensions.

Wielding a banner saying: 2004 and Still Stripped of our Pensions, the demonstrators paraded at the pier in Brighton to coincide with the Labour Party's annual conference.

Andrew Parr, a former process control engineer at the Allied Steel & Wire (ASW) mill in Brielle Way, Sheerness, said the men wore cheeky underpants while the women wore swimming costumes and false boobs for the event organised by the Pensions Fund Action Group.

Mr Parr, who also runs the group's website, said: "We welcome the fact the that the Government has acknowledged the problem, but the money they have offered is nowhere near what we wanted."

This afternoon, members of the group were due to meet Pensions Minister Malcolm Wicks with Sittingbourne and Sheppey MP Derek Wyatt, who arranged the meeting, to emphasise their concerns.

The former ASW workers were among about 60,000 people nationally whose pensions disappeared when their firms went bust.

The Government is working on a £400 million compensation package but members of the stricken pension schemes say the amount is not enough. Mr Parr added: "We simply want the pensions that we paid for. I don't think that's unreasonable.

John Hayter, another protestor who has worked at the mill for 30 years, said: “It has been estimated that, to give everybody their pensions back, would cost £75 million over 30 years. The Government is offering £20 million over 20 years.

“There’s a huge gap in our pensions and the Government has not resolved this at all. I am retiring in 18 months and I face retiring into poverty.”

The demonstration follows similar one last October at the Labour Party’s Bournemouth conference when steelmen stripped to shorts and underpants before displaying a banner saying: Stripped of our Pensions.