WIDOWERS in Bury are being targeted in a Greater Manchester-wide campaign to ensure they receive any backdated benefit due to them.

Salford Unemployed & Community Resource Centre has received a £5,000 grant grant to fight for equal rights for men.

The centre, whose solicitor is Bury-based Bryan Slater, say that women whose partner dies have always received a death benefit, widowed mothers allowance and widows payment.

Mr Slater explained that it was only on April 9 last year that the Welfare Reform and Pension Act came into force allowing any man whose wife had died after that date to apply for widowed parents allowance.

Mr Slater said: "It also allowed for any man whose wife died after that date to apply for bereavement payment or bereavement allowance in exactly the same way as a woman who dies on or after that date.

"Women had been doing it for years. Widows benefit was enshrined by a 1992 Act giving benefits for widows after their husbands died -- but not vice-versa."

The Government was forced by the European Court to introduce "bereavement benefit" from April 2001 which from that date treated men and women equally when their partner dies. But the Government refused to back date the legislation.

The first test case in the European Court last month decided that a man whose wife died in 1996 was entitled to be treated equally under the law. He was awarded £25,000 back dated compensation.

Now, the centre says it is clear that all men whose wives died since 1992 are entitled to make a claim.

Figures from the Government show that since 1992 more than 70,000 men were widowed each year in Englad and Wales

Centre development officer Alec McFadden, who has been spearheading the campaign, said: "We are very pleased to receive this grant because it allows the centre to develop the first ever take up campaign for back dated widowers benefit for the male widowers from Salford and surrounding areas, including Bury."

The centre has already trained five local volunteers to staff its freephone 0500 501 123 which will operate five days a week, 10am until 4pm.

Alec went on: "The UK Government has not as yet conceded that all male widowers should be paid out. Therefore, it is vital that the maximum pressure is applied."

His own wife died in 1997. He took his claim to the Social Security Appeal. He was told by the court he could not have the benefits the wife might get because "the claimant is not a woman".