Former members of Britain's armed forces have not been granted the pensions they deserve, according to a local campaigner.

Ernest Cockburn, 58, has added his voice to renewed calls from the Combined Armed Forces Federation of the UK.

The group says those who left the military before qualifying for a full pension before 1975 should still get an allowance based on the number of years served.

Mr Cockburn, who joined the Royal Air Force as a 15-year-old, said: "We're trying to right a perceived wrong."

He explained: "Up until 1975 one had to complete 22 years of continuous service to qualify for a pension.

"In 1975 they realised this was unfair so changed the rules to make it time related.

"The point of the Federation is that we were really underpaid to fund this pension."

Mr Cockburn, an operating theatre technician, was in the RAF's medical branch from 1963 to 1972.

He saw active service in Aden in 1967, when British troops waged a campaign against local insurgents.

Today he lives in Haworth and runs his own company.

"There are quite a few of us now who think this is totally unfair," he said."Why did we not get a pension for the time that we served? A friend of mine completed his full service of 12 years but he did not get a full pension."

He said he was sure many other ex-service men and women were in a worse financial state than he was.

Earlier challenges to the Government over these pension rights were defeated in the British courts.

However, Mr Cockburn said the Federation was now taking its case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Keighley MP Ann Cryer said she fully supported the cause.

"They're entitled to as a good a pension as anyone else in the armed forces," she said.

She said taking the campaign to Europe would be a long, complex process and she thought the campaigners had deserved victory in the British courts.

Last year the Ministry of Defence rejected demands for a fairer settlement.

Replying to questions in Parliament in 2004, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Ministry of Defence, Ivor Caplin, said the system could not be reformed.

He said: "Payment of a pension is governed by the rules of the scheme at the time an individual leaves the scheme.

"Prior to April 1975, there was no legal requirement for any pension scheme to preserve pension rights for those who left the Service before qualifying for a pension."