PENSION protesters from Garrington's in Bromsgrove staged a traffic-stopping demo in the middle of Birmingham on Saturday.

Around 40 placard-waving demonstrators blockaded Queensway, near the Bull Ring, and held up Christmas shoppers for almost 30 minutes before police moved them on.

The Birmingham demo coincided with similar action in Glasgow and Sheffield, the biggest towns near to other UEF companies.

"Some motorists got angry and shouted at us," said Ben Perry, area secretary for Amicus, the union leading the pension fight.

"They're not used to protests in Birmingham like they are in London. We have to keep our case in the public eye so we chose big cities at Christmas shopping time."

The protesters are campaigning for the restoration of full pension rights from companies going into administration. Mr Perry said some employees of Garrington's, owned by UEF, had been left with just 30 per cent of the scheme they had paid into, sometimes for as long as 40 years, when the firm was wound up.

The European courts and the Parliamentary Ombudsman are involved and the working party for a £400 million fund set up by the Government is due to report soon on the case, which affects thousands nationwide.

Mr Perry said he was surprised to see a UEF protest feature in a BBC docu-drama last Thursday called The Man Who Broke Britain, about financial meltdown.

"Footage of one of our protests was used to show what could happen on the streets," he said. "We just happened to be watching it and I spotted my wife Jan and some other people from Bromsgrove."

He said more protests are planned for next year.