Pensioners took their clothes off outside the Labour conference to highlight how they had been stripped of their pension money.

The nude protest was staged by workers who lost pension funds after firms went bust.

It was just one of a string of inventive demonstrations outside the second day of the conference in Brighton.

Other protests included angry nurses, surfers against sewage and hunger strikers in orange boiler suits.

They all tried to pull the media spotlight away from the Brighton Centre, where Chancellor Gordon Brown was giving his speech.

During the pensions protest, several men stripped to their shorts and held up a banner reading: "Still stripped of our pensions".

An estimated 85,000 workers across the country have lost occupational pensions after their employers went into administration or out of business.

The Pensioners' Action Group said yesterday it was time the Government stepped in to help.

In a separate protest, nurses demonstrated their opposition to private companies being offered more work in the NHS.

More than a dozen nurses and other health workers from Sussex and London stood opposite the Brighton Centre chanting: "We are not for sale".

They held up a giant banner displaying the same message to drive home their campaign.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, which organised the protest, said: "There has been no debate or discussion about the private firms being offered more work which has really angered health workers across the country."

Conference delegates will tomorrow debate a motion calling for the Government to end the private sector's involvement in the NHS.

A group of environmental campaigners from Cornwall used a giant inflatable to draw attention to their call for the Government to act over sewage in Brighton and Hove.

Surfers Against Sewage said the city discharged the equivalent of 50 Olympic swimming pools of raw sewage into the sea each day.

They said it was the only major seaside resort in the UK to breach the EU's Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive.

As part of the demonstration the group floated a Full Sewage Treatment For Brighton banner in the sea in front of the Brighton Centre alongside the 14ft long inflatable faeces.

Delegates walking into the Brighton Centre were greeted by two men wearing orange boiler suits staging a 24-hour fast to draw attention to the plight of Guantanamo inmate Omar Deghayes.

Tom De Serville, 23, and Mark Hamlin, 28, said they would not eat until today at 1pm in sympathy with Mr Deghayes and the 200 other Guantanamo detainees who have been on hunger strike for more than six weeks.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005