SHEERNESS steelworkers are travelling to London today to serve a writ on the Government for failing to protect their pensions.

They will join other trade union representatives as they take historic legal action to reinstate the pensions of workers who lost their benefits when their companies went bust.

Amicus and the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (ISTC) will serve the writ on pensions minister Malcolm Wicks. They say successive Governments have failed to properly implement a European directive which would have protected the pension schemes.

Hundreds of former ASW Sheerness and Cardiff steelworkers lost the members'pensions they had paid into for decades when the firm went into receivership in July 2002.

The trade unions have a £1million fighting fund for the case against the Government, which could be settled in the European Court of Justice.

Sheerness steelworker Pat Wiggins, secretary of the Kent branch of the ISTC, said former ASW workers had shown great restraint in their fight for compensation.

He said: "The time for talking is over, We have got to take it to the courts.

"As a Labour member, it is a sad day that we are having to take the Labour Government to court. But our members in Sheerness have been talking to Government ministers for nearly a year now and there doesn't seem to be any improvement in the talks."

The Government plans to introduce an insurance scheme to protect workers' pensions in the future, but the moves will not help employees of firms that have already gone into receivership.

ISTC general secretary Michael Leahy said: "We hope that the Government will think again and recognise their responsibility to our members at ASW, but if they don't, then we will fight this case all the way."

Amicus assistant general secretary Paul Talbot added: "ASW workers that their final salary scheme was secure, but now they've lost almost everything. In fact, they'd have been better off putting their money under their beds.

"Because the UK Government has failed to protect workers' pensions, as other EU member states have, they have a moral and financial responsibility to compensate these people now."