The 2015 British General Election: Capitalism’s One-Horse Race

Colin Todhunter

Britain is currently in the grip of a general election campaign. Voting takes place on 7 May and election fever in the media is building as various commentators and politicians engage in empty rhetoric about British values and democratic principles. Due to the nature of the ‘first past the post’ voting system, the only two parties with a realistic hope of achieving a majority of seats in parliament are Labour and the Conservatives. As in the outgoing parliament, the party most likely to achieve third place, the Liberal Democrats, might hold the balance of power in a hung parliament.

On TV last week there was a ‘leaders’ debate’. The issues debated revolved around the economy, the National Health Service and immigration. Leaders of the three main parties embraced a cosy consensus based on the need to continue with ‘austerity’ but quibbled over the nature or speed of cuts to the public sector and public services. The debate has set the tone for the unfolding campaign.

All three main parties are pro-big business and are aligned with the neoliberal economic agenda set by the financial cartel based in the City of London and on Wall Street and by the major transnational corporations. The likes of Chatham House, Centre for Policy Studies, Foreign Policy Centre, Reform, Institute of Economic Affairs and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (most of which the British public have never heard of) have already determined the pro-corporate and generally pro-Washington policies that the parties will sell to the public. Pressure tactics at the top level of politics, massively funded lobbying groups and the revolving door between private corporations and the machinery of state have also helped shape the policy agenda.

As if to underline this, in 2012 Labour MP Austin Mitchell described the UK’s big four accountancy firms as being “more powerful than government.” He said the companies’ financial success allows them privileged access to government policy makers. Of course, similar sentiments concerning ‘privileged access’ could also be forwarded about many other sectors, not least the arms industry and global agritech companies which armed with their poisons, unsustainable model of industrial agriculture and bogus claims have been working hand in glove with government to force GMO’s into the UK despite most people who hold a view on the matter not wanting them.

The impact and power of think tanks, lobbying and cronyism means that the major parties merely provide the illusion of choice and democracy to a public that is easily manipulated courtesy of a toothless and supine corporate media. The knockabout point-scoring of party politics serves as entertainment for a public that is increasingly disillusioned with politics.

The upshot is that the main parties have all accepted economic neoliberalism and the financialisation of the British economy and all that it has entailed: weak or non-existent trade unions, an ideological assault on the public sector, the offshoring of manufacturing, deregulation, privatisation and an economy dominated by financial services.

In Britain, long gone are the relatively well-paid manufacturing jobs that helped build and sustain the economy. In its place, the country has witnessed the imposition of a low taxation regime, low-paid and insecure ‘service sector’ jobs (no-contract work, macjobs, call centre jobs – much of which soon went abroad), a real estate bubble, credit card debt and student debt, which all helped to keep the economy afloat and maintain demand during the so-called boom years under Tony Blair. Levels of public debt spiraled, personal debt became unsustainable and the deregulated financial sector demanded the public must write down its own gambling debts.

The economy is now based on (held to ransom by) a banking and finance-sector cartel that specialises in rigging markets, debt creation, money laundering  and salting away profits in various City of London satellite tax havens and beyond. The banking industry applies huge pressure on governments and has significant influence over policies to ensure things remain this way.

If you follow the election campaign, you will see no talk from the main parties about bringing the railway and energy and water facilities back into public ownership. Instead, privatisation will continue and massive profits will be raked in as the public forks out for private-sector subsidies and the increasingly costly ‘services’ provided.

There will be no talk of nationalising the major banks or even properly regulating or taxing them (and other large multinationals) to gain access to funds that could build decent infrastructure for the public benefit.

Although the economy will be glibly discussed throughout the campaign, little will be mentioned about why or how the top one percent in the UK increased their wealth substantially in 2008 alone when the economic crisis hit. Little will be said about why levels of inequality have sky rocketed over the past three decades.

When manufacturing industry was decimated (along with the union movement) and offshored, people were told that finance was to be the backbone of the ‘new’ economy. And to be sure it has become the backbone. A spineless one based on bubbles, derivatives trading, speculation and all manner of dodgy transactions and practices. Margaret Thatcher in the eighties sold the economy to bankers and transnational corporations and they have never looked back. It was similar in the US.

Now Britain stands shoulder to shoulder with Washington’s militaristic agenda as the US desperately seeks to maintain global hegemony – not by rejecting the financialisation of its economy, rebuilding a manufacturing base with decent jobs and thus boosting consumer demand or ensuring the state takes responsibility for developing infrastructure to improve people’s quality of life – but by attacking Russia and China which are doing some of those very things and as a result are rising to challenge the US as the dominant global economic power.

The election campaign instead of focusing on ‘austerity’, immigrants or welfare recipients, who are depicted by certain politicians and commentators as bleeding the country dry, should concern itself with the tax-evading corporate dole-scrounging super rich, the neoliberal agenda they have forced on people and their pushing for policies that would guarantee further plunder, most notably the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

However, with a rigged media and all major parties representing the interests of an unaccountable financial-corporate-state elite, we can expect Britain to continue to fall in line behind Washington’s militarism and a further hollowing out of what remains of the economy and civil society.

No matter who wins on 7 May, the public is destined for more of the same. The real outcome of the election has already been decided by the interlocking directorate of think tanks, big business and its lobby groups and the higher echelons of the civil service. The election will be akin to rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship.

Do You Have to be a Muslim to be a Terrorist?

Ridwan Sheikh

Would a Muslim receive tougher terrorism sentencing than anybody else?

The question might seem outlandish but the differing court verdicts of terrorism cases, between a Muslim and those of other beliefs, emphasize the inconsistencies in legal judgements.

This kind of double standard has angered the British Muslim community. It’s now holding credible weight. The Lufthansa’s Germanwings airliner tragedy being a case in point. The investigation’s prosecutor, Brice Robin, dismissed the notion of terrorism, quoting: ‘There is no indication of any kind of terrorist background’. In other words, when a person’s background ticks all the boxes is it terrorism.

This logic is deeply flawed. The co-pilot Andreas Lubitz’s suicide mission that killed him and the rest of the 150 passengers shared the same intent as the 9/11 killings, yet the media stopped short of reporting terrorism. No doubt, a Muslim name would have swung it.

Cynics would argue Lubitz didn’t have any motives for terrorism. No political agenda. No extreme ideology. No radicalisation. Even with such motives the refusal to accept a conflicting perspective to the media’s imprint of who is a terrorist is the root issue obscuring sound judgments.

Consider the case of Ryan McGee, a British soldier, who avoided a terrorism conviction in November 2014. He’s serving just two years in prison. McGee had a political agenda. He had an extreme ideology, and he was certainly radicalised.

McGee, an English Defence League (EDL) supporter, wrote of murdering immigrants and praised Adolf Hitler. His murderous intent was supported by his homemade nail bomb in a jar, containing screws and glass to cause widespread harm, and possible deaths. But the Jury was resolute in dismissing terrorism charges.

If the Jury looked to the psychological effects that go with being a soldier, as its last stand, then this too was flimsy. McGee was a British soldier serving in Germany at the time of his arrest.

This criss-cross thinking has a lot to do with how the Government determines terror cases, just as much as propaganda reporting. Take Nigel Wilson, who is due to appear in court in April. He’s accused of flying a drone over the Houses of Parliament, the Queen Victoria memorial and several football stadiums. Remarkably, the alleged 17 offences refer specifically to the Air Navigation Order 2009 act, which governs the regulations for flying a drone. Not a single terrorism charge was bought up.

The sceptics would point to recent UK cases, rubbishing claims of preferential treatment, such as the Hana Khan trial. The naivety of sending money to a Turkish fighter in Syria for promises of marriage turned into a sham after discovering Hana Khan was dumped in favour of another woman. The judge was satisfied that Khan was duped and posed no threat, and gave her a 21-month suspended sentence. But in truth, such outcomes are limited to isolated cases.

Until there is a sincere willingness and effort to overcome prejudices and stereotypes in approaching terrorism, just like any other criminal case, by concentrating on the facts in an un-bias way, then the inequality in trial sentencing will continue.

Heavy Weather

DAVID YEARSLEY

In Upstate New York the long winter, even harsher than last, has been washed away by torrential rains. This morning at the Ithaca Falls the muddy floodwaters have risen to the walls of the wide gorge, the thunderstorms of yesterday having come so soon after the arctic blasts of last week. In spite of the warmth and the wet a few final remnants of ice cling to the steepest shale in defiance of the furious thaw.

After the morning’s visit to the falls, I return to my relatively watertight house—the only major leak is directly over the kitchen table—and open up the New York Times to see apocalyptic, aesthetically beautiful photographs documenting California’s drought—as in a shot of a Cathedral City hacienda-style MacMansion, like a green island in the sand unmoored from the nearby-but-still-so-distant suburbs with their cul-de-sacs, swimming pools, palm trees, and lawns. Other aerial pictures show a lush green golf course buffered from the white desert by only a two-lane road.  In another edition of the Times this week, tiny Californian corn plants struggle to sustain themselves in the parched soil, as wells are drilled frantically all around.

My father—after retiring from a career in oceanography at the EPA has followed the great migration to climate science—sends me reports that explain both the summery winter of his Pacific Northwest and the arctic conditions of the eastern United States. Jennifer Francis of the Rutgers Climate Institute ascribes the bi-polar American weather to the erratic jet stream and rapidly melting arctic ice. Spurred on by feedback loops, that arctic ice won’t last much longer, geologically speaking, than the ice in the nearby gorge.

Some steel themselves against the looming catastrophe by reminding themselves that all generations have predicted an imminent doomsday, the current one conjured not by the church but by the cult of science. I seek refuge instead in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, for a couple of centuries now posthumous head of a global cult of his own. Especially as Bach was a deeply religious man and I’m an atheist, it amazes me that his works so often—and in such unexpected ways—encourage one to think anew about modern conditions and concerns. It’s an old and rather tired trope that great works of art engage the human imagination across several centuries: durability and mutability are taken as hallmarks of a masterpiece. But it is striking that Bach’s music can flourish in a secular society.

A great musical scientist even while he seems to have been at odds with many of the rationalist impulses of the Enlightenment, Bach was especially good on weather: storms; raging seas; high winds; even earthquakes.

In contemplating the current rains’ rout of winter’s snowy regime as well as the week’s headlines I’ve turned again to one of Bach’s early cantata,Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt (Just as the rain and snow fall from heaven), BWV 18. It’s all there: remorselessly inclement weather that nonetheless nourishes the earth and makes for a plentiful harvest; and even as the elements do their work enemy forces, both foreign and domestic, threaten the heart and the heartland.

Probably composed in 1713 while Bach was working in Weimar and was setting out to build up his corpus of scared vocal music, the cantata begins with an instrumental sinfonia—a kind of concerto that draws on the innovations of Vivaldi, himself renowned not just for his musical energy and mastery of form and pacing, but also for his gifts as a tone painter of the natural world, as in the Four Seasons. The main theme of Bach’s three-minute sinfonia to this cantata is a bare bass line full of unsettling downward leaps played by the lower strings and bassoon—like pelting sleet. This obstinate figure is then relieved by four violas and two recorders that seem to assuage the bleakness of the bass, which yields to this fuller, more harmonious texture and begins to signal a desire to accommodate itself to a somewhat sunnier outlook. But the bare and disjointed bass line keeps returning: winter’s rain, sleet, and snow will not let up, and the movement begins exactly as it ended, the relentless precipitation falling at last to bleak low G.

The sinfonia is followed by a bass recitative:

“Just as the rain and snow fall from heaven and do not return again to it, rather moisten the earth and make it fruitful and able to grow, so that it gives seed for sowing and bread to eat: So shall the word, that goes forth from my mouth be also.”

The words “rain” and “snow” are depicted by falling leaps, the action of the flakes and drops through the air evoked by swirling scales. Then the recitative—comprised of skeins of sung text punctuated by chords from the organ—breaks into a trot at the word “fruitful.” This aria-like music built into a recitative is known as arioso and here Bach uses it to paint for us the sowers working the fields, the dark damp of winter giving way to the bright joys of spring. This change of season is captured by Bach within a few seconds. It’s simple music in comparison to Bach’s multi-voiced choruses and erudite contrapuntal works, but a literally shining example of his gifts for musical depiction done with brilliant economy. In a few bars he demonstrates his skill not only with the darker musical hues but also with the brighter colors of the palette.

This first recitative for bass, is followed by one for tenor:

“My God, here is my heart: I open it to you in my Jesus’s name; so cast your seed within as on a fertile soil. My God, here is my heart: May it bear such fruit, and hundred fold. O Lord, Lord, help! O Lord, let it be accomplished.”

Over the subsequent decades of his composing career Bach would demonstrate his love for, and mastery of, juxtaposing old musical techniques with new ones. In this early cantata the operatically-inspired recitative also increase in tempo to become ardent ariosos that are in turn interrupted by soprano litanies—long notes in austerely archaic style riding high above double-time bass lines. These communal prayers ask that “Satan be crushed under our feet”; “that we, from the Turks and the Pope’s horrid murder and blasphemy, raging and fury, be fatherly protected.” Even as the climate attacks—and nourishes—the ISIS and Al Qaeda of Bach’s day threaten “civilization.” And there are other internal enemies, too: “Mammon,” sings the tenor, has also claimed many souls.

The movement concludes with the full choir joining in the soprano part to beg God “That all erring and misled ones be brought back”; this prayer comes to halt abruptly, if resonantly, on a final full chord.

A sweet soprano aria follows—“Mein Seelenschatz ist Gotteswort” (My soul’s treasure is God’s word)—in which the four violas are given a figure that does its fair share of cascading but then begins to ascend, tracing jubilant shapes upward. Sunny breezes lift the soprano still farther up towards blue skies.

A four-part chorale reiterating a heartfelt prayer for God’s grace closes the cantata.

For all its dark weather of sin and fear, this music has lot more optimism in it than the New York Times.

Australian Senate tax grandstanding: A preparation for austerity

Mike Head

An Australian Senate parliamentary committee hearing on Wednesday was dominated by the fire and brimstone of Labor and Greens politicians directed against tax avoidance by major corporations.

Labor Senator Sam Dastyari called on Australian Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan to “name some of Australia’s worst corporate offenders,” declaring that they “should be named and shamed.” He stated: “The tax office tells us there’s $60 billion a year being shifted to tax havens. If just some of that was taxable income ... you’re looking at $5 billion a year that is being minimised, evaded, structured out of our economy.”

The senator hastened to add that he had great “respect” for Apple, Google and Microsoft—the companies appearing at the hearing. He was not accusing them of tax evasion, he emphasised, but asking them to consider their “moral” obligations.

Greens leader Senator Christine Milne joined the fray. “It’s the big end of town that are the leaners,” she declared. “They’re the ones who are shifting their profits overseas to tax havens, low-tax jurisdictions, and laughing all the way to the bank.”

On the same theme, Treasurer Joe Hockey, speaking for the Liberal-National government, recently warned that Australia is “losing control of our destiny from a taxation perspective” because of “holes” in the tax treatment of multinational corporations.

All this feigned outrage is cynical window dressing. Its purpose is to give an appearance of preparing to “tax the rich” in order to lend a veneer of “fairness” for a stepped-up drive to impose deeper cuts to social spending under conditions of a sharp worsening of the outlook for Australian capitalism.

Because of imploding prices for iron ore, coal and gas—Australia’s largest exports—the Abbott government’s budget deficit is likely to blow out this financial year from a projected $30 billion in last May’s budget to around $45 billion. This is intensifying the business elite’s demands for the government—and Labor, the Greens and the rest of the parliamentary establishment—to find the means to overcome the widespread public opposition to last year’s budget measures to slash health, education and welfare programs, and to inflict even greater cuts in living standards.

For all the grandstanding at the Senate hearing, there is no prospect of forcing the global transnationals, or their wealthy executive and shareholders, to pay higher taxes. The globalisation of production over the past four decades has enabled the corporations to play one government off against another, demanding ever-lower taxes and labour costs.

In Australia, successive governments, both Labor and Liberal-National, have dramatically lowered company and high income tax rates, and shifted the burden onto the working class via the gutting of social services, as well as a regressive Goods and Services Tax. Since the Hawke Labor government’s election in 1983, the company tax rate has been slashed from 46 percent to 30 percent, and the top income tax rate from 60 percent to 46.5 percent.

These rates, however, are now far too high as far as the financial elite is concerned. At the Senate hearing, Google executive Maile Carnegie insisted: “We are not opposed to paying tax. We are opposed to being noncompetitive.” She rattled off company tax rates elsewhere: The UK—20 percent, Ireland—12.5 percent, South Korea—24 percent, Singapore—17 percent, Bermuda—0 percent.

Carnegie and her Apple and Microsoft counterparts flatly defended their tax structures, which enabled Apple to shift an estimated $8.9 billion in untaxed profits out of Australia over the past decade, and Microsoft to divert $2 billion a year from Australia to Singapore.

Leaks from Luxembourg’s tax haven last year showed that such arrangements have become the worldwide norm. The Australian arm of Swedish furniture giant IKEA, for instance, paid just $31 million in taxes on $4.76 billion of turnover from 2002 to 2013, using complicated financial manoeuvres through the Netherlands Antilles, Luxembourg and Switzerland.

Australia’s biggest companies are all doing the same. This week, theAustralian Financial Review revealed that BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have reported a combined $12 billion in profits from their Singapore “marketing hubs” since 2008, on which they paid as little as 2.5 percent tax.

A recent Tax Justice Network report estimated that of Australia’s 200 largest publicly-listed companies, 29 percent have an effective tax rate of 10 percent or less and 14 percent have an effective rate of zero. The TJN report calculated that if the 200 firms paid the statutory 30 percent rate, the government would gain $8.4 billion annually.

This pales into insignificance on a global scale, with the poorest countries bearing the brunt. International aid agency Oxfam estimates that so-called developing nations lose $US114 billion in tax revenue each year, even based on the super-low tax rates that many of these countries set to try to attract investment.

Any official pretence at tackling the problem will be purely cosmetic. Treasurer Hockey has hinted at introducing, in this year’s budget, a measure similar to the new “diverted profits tax” or “Google tax” in the UK, which requires multinationals to pay a slightly higher tax rate on profits sent offshore. Britain’s token impost is expected to raise less than $US1 billion over three years—a drop in the bucket compared to the massive profits of the corporate and financial giants.

Likewise, at last November’s G20 leaders’ summit in Brisbane, the final communiqué claimed there was “significant progress” on a “Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Action Plan” to counteract tax minimisation. Yet the plan only envisages reciprocal exchanges of tax information by the end of 2018, and even that depends on the unlikely prospect of common legislation being passed in each country, when they are increasingly locked in conflict over investment, resources and markets.

Dastyari’s posturing in the Senate was particularly duplicitous. Yesterday’s Australian Financial Review reported that last week he withdrew a formal written request for the country’s big four banks—Commonwealth, ANZ, National Australia and Westpac—and two other large financial institutions, AMP and Macquarie, to appear before the same Senate committee.

Labor leader Bill Shorten and shadow treasurer Chris Bowen instigated the about-face because the finance houses objected, saying that Dastyari’s political theatre was undermining Labor’s efforts at “building a constructive relationship with business.”

Labor, as always, will stop at nothing to enforce the dictates of the financial elite—the real purpose behind Dastyari’s parliamentary play acting.

Dutch Labor Party collapses in provincial elections

Josh Varlin

Last Wednesday’s provincial elections in the Netherlands were a catastrophe for the ruling parties, particularly the Labor Party (PvdA, Party for the Workers). Amid mass abstention, the Liberal Party (VVD, People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) and PvdA both lost large shares of the vote, with the PvdA failing to win control of a single province.

The ex-Maoist Socialist Party (SP) gained more provincial seats than the PvdA, as well as control of Groningen province.

The pseudo-left GreenLeft (GroenLinks) group—an amalgamation of the Communist Party of the Netherlands, the Pacifist Socialist Party, the Political Party of Radicals, and the Evangelical People’s Party—won only 5.3 percent of the vote. It is a member of the European Green Party within the European Parliament, where it is allied with such hardened parties of bourgeois rule as the German Greens.

Only 47 percent of the electorate went to the polls on March 18, down from 56 percent in the last provincial elections (2011) and 75 percent in the last general election (2012). General elections normally have a higher turnout than provincial elections.

The provincial elections determine the composition of the States-Provincial (provincial legislatures) in each of the country’s 12 provinces. The States-Provincial then elect representatives to the Dutch Senate, the upper house of the States-General, or Parliament, in May. Within their respective provinces, the States-Provincial manage the provincial budget, including public transport, bicycle paths, cultural policy and some utilities.

The elections represented a massive loss for the “purple coalition” Rutte government of the VVD and PvdA, which already relies on opposition votes to get legislation through the Senate. Smaller parties, including the PS, picked up large sections of the VVD and PvdA vote.

Dutch politics are now extremely fractured, with no party taking more than 16 percent of the vote. Six parties took between 10 and 16 percent of the vote, including the VVD at 15.8 percent, the PvdA at 10.1 percent, the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA-14.6 percent), Party for Freedom (PVV-11.7 percent), Democrats 66 (D66-12.3 percent), and the Socialist Party (SP-11.6 percent).

A handful of smaller single-issue parties also received increased support, including 50PLUS (focused on pensioners’ rights) and Party for the Animals (PvdD), both of which received about four percent of the vote, compared to two percent in the previous provincial election in 2011.

With the ruling VVD-PvdA coalition receiving only 21 seats in a fractured 75-seat Senate, unusual political alliances and “rolling” coalitions in the upper house are likely.

VVD parliamentary leader Halbe Ziljistra alluded to this situation, saying that “The bottom line is that the country has to be governed.” That is, the VVD and PvdA will do their utmost to ensure that “necessary” austerity measures are carried through despite a divided Senate.

Mass abstention and the collapse of the PvdA vote testify to the broad social anger and alienation in the working class against the Dutch bourgeoisie’s agenda of austerity. However, these sentiments find no expression in the political establishment, which offers only bourgeois parties of the far-right and pseudo-left varieties as alternatives to the PvdA and VVD.

Geert Wilders’ far-right xenophobic PVV (Party for Freedom), known mostly for its anti-Islamic policies and Wilders’ court battles over hate speech, will likely take a small loss of one seat in the next Senate. As a result, some commentators have speculated that the rise of far-right parties in the Netherlands is no longer a major issue.

Whatever the short-term evolution of the electoral map in the Netherlands, such views are superficial and complacent. The rise of far-right or fascistic parties that exploit popular anger with bankrupt social-democratic parties is a well-documented phenomenon in European politics, most recently in France.

As the ex-Maoist SP and the liberal-centrist D66 collaborate in austerity measures and orient themselves ever more openly to the agenda of the ruling parties, they are doing everything they can to block the development of opposition from the left, in the working class, to austerity. The PS is further integrating itself into the ruling establishment, having won control of Groningen province. It is being groomed to support government austerity policies in the Senate.

Following Syriza’s election victory in Greece, the SP issued a statement praising Syriza entitled “Hope writes history in Greece,” paraphrasing Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras’ victory speech. SP leader Emile Roemer sent congratulations to Tsipras on Syriza’s victory. However, Syriza has since capitulated to European Union demands for austerity and is imposing new cuts on the working class in Greece.

Tata ends British Steel pension scheme

Danny Richardson

The Indian steel giant Tata Steel has announced plans to close the British Steel defined benefit pension scheme it inherited after the takeover of the once state-owned company. Tata Group, an Indian multinational, owns Tata Steel Europe—the former Corus Group plc., which was established in 1999 from a merger of a Dutch firm, Koninklijke Hoogovens, and British Steel.

The company will transfer from the British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) to an inferior defined-contribution provision scheme. This will hit the benefits of 140,000 plan members, including 16,000 existing workers and 91,264 pensioners. Tata stands to save around £1 billion as a result of ending the British Steel pension scheme.

Tata Steel Europe took the first step towards closing the scheme two years ago when it announced that from April 2014 new starters would be enrolled in a less generous defined contribution scheme.

The company said, “We have been unable to come to an agreement that would have enabled defined benefit provision to continue and will be consulting employees on a proposal to close the defined benefit scheme to future accrual.”

The defined benefit provision plan was based on the company promising to pay a specified monthly benefit based on employees’ length of service and earnings. The employer also made good on any investment losses. The Defined Contribution plan has no such guarantee and the final pension workers receive is solely governed by the market performance of the scheme.

A 60-day statutory consultation period began on March 23 and Tata is proposing to close the scheme on April 1, 2016.

Negotiations between Tata and the trade unions have been ongoing since November 2014. After months of talks, the unions said they were disappointed that Tata broke off discussions and publicly announced the closure without reaching an agreement with them.

In March at a meeting of the three main unions involved—Community, GMB and Unite—held at the Trades Union Congress headquarters in London, a decision was taken to hold ballots for strike action. If a strike goes ahead it would be the first national action for 30 years in the industry.

Roy Rickhuss, general secretary of Community and chairman of the union coordinating committee, said, “Tata Steel’s decision to close the British Steel Pension Scheme is unnecessary and profoundly disappointing. It is not a position we expected to find ourselves in, given that trade unions have been in discussions with the company since early November.”

Rickhuss pathetically complained that the union had done everything possible to reach an agreement and was willing to ensure that members of the pension scheme would have to pay out even more.

“Throughout a long process, we have acted in good faith and negotiated constructively in trying to reach an agreement which addresses what we acknowledge to be a significant deficit in the scheme.

“We have made every effort to compromise with the company, even discussing the possibility of meeting the deficit through changes to member benefits, despite the fact the company is legally obliged to pay for the deficit and has always done so in the past.”

However Rickhuss continued, “the company rejected this offer out of hand. It appears they are hell-bent on closing the scheme and are not prepared to compromise.”

The UK steel industry employed 200,000 workers in 1970 compared to 19,000 today. By November 2014, the British Steel scheme was valued at about £13.6 billion with just 16,000 workers contributing to the fund.

An article dated March 13 in the Financial Times detailed the financial deficit facing the British Steel Pension Scheme. The FT said, “Although the figure is not finalised, the pension deficit is thought to be in the region of £2bn as of March 31 2014. This compares with a deficit of £1.2bn in 2013. The steel group estimates the closure will create savings of about £1bn.”

Final salary or defined benefit pension plans were used extensively by unions, particularly in the UK public sector, as a bargaining point in lieu of increased wages. With companies such as Tata no longer willing to secure the funds’ assets, the fate of pensioners and the pensions of present employees now rests on the speculative and unstable performance of the stock market, in particular the equity markets.

In 2012 the British government commissioned a review of the Equity Markets. Its findings published in the Kay Report were an attempt to allay fears over the way the long-term equity markets were managed.

However, any recommendations against dangerous practices made by Professor John Kay were treated with scepticism. At the launch of the report the Guardian commented, “To the sceptics, the Kay report will read as a longing for a world that disappeared 20 years ago—one where the investment landscape was dominated by large fund managers with concentrated portfolios; where private investors were still a force; where index-tracking, and index-hugging, was a minority sport; where hedge funds and ultra high-frequency traders barely registered.”

Tata’s decision on pensions comes after the October 2014 disclosure that the company had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Klesch Group to sell its European long products division to the Geneva based group. This led to fears that up to 6,000 steelworker jobs would be lost in the UK and a further 600 across Europe. Tata claimed the decision for the sell-off is part of its plans to concentrate on the steel strip division based in Port Talbot, Wales.

The steel unions claimed they were unaware of Tata’s plans. The national trade union steel coordinating committee said they would “stop the sale through a cross-Tata campaign.”

The main concern of the unions is not with the fate of steel workers who face unemployment in an already economically depressed area, but with the threat to the competitiveness of the British economy. A statement released by the unions called “on the government to intervene in the public interest to ensure a future for the industrial assets of strategic importance to the UK’s construction, infrastructure and manufacturing base.”

The UK retail giant Tesco, one of the last four FTSE100 employers offering a defined benefits scheme to new starters, has also announced its intention to close its defined benefit pension scheme affecting 350,000 members. The scheme has a £3 billion deficit.

Tesco’s decision forms part of its £500 million cost cutting plans, including the threatened loss of 10,000 jobs. This follows a prolonged disastrous trading period that has led to a Serious Fraud Office investigation for accounting irregularities.

What is clear in the downgrading of Tata and Tesco’s pension funds is that workers past and present will pay for the reckless actions of the multinational companies. As has been the case in the public sector regarding established pension rights, the steel unions may make noises about opposing such proposals and even ballot for strike action but this will only be a precursor for an inevitable climb down and capitulation.

Since the 2008 global financial crash, backed by numerous pseudo-left groups who act as their apologists, the trade unions have overseen the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs in both the public and private sectors. The fight to retain rights won over decades of struggle cannot be left in the hands of the moribund trade unions. New organizations of working class struggle that are independent of the unions and capitalist parties must be built to initiate this fight.

Iranian regime cautiously embraces international nuclear deal

Peter Symonds

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, yesterday sounded a note of caution over the nuclear framework agreement reached last week with the P5+1 grouping—the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany. While declaring that he was “100 percent” supportive of a nuclear accord, he added, “there is still no guarantee of reaching the finishing line.”

Iranian negotiators led by Foreign Minister Javad Zarif made sweeping concessions during the protracted negotiations, agreeing to strict limits on uranium enrichment, the refashioning of an uncompleted heavy water reactor and highly intrusive inspections for unspecified sanctions relief. A final agreement is due to be completed by June 30.

Over the past week, significant sections of Iran’s bourgeois-clerical regime have praised Zarif and hailed the agreement as an important breakthrough that could end the crippling US-led sanctions regime. In a nationally televised speech last Friday, President Hassan Rouhani, who initiated the negotiations, declared that the deal “benefits everyone” and would open a “new page” in the country’s international relations.

Last Sunday, Iran’s armed forces chief, General Hassan Firouzabidi, wrote to Khamenei thanking Rouhani for his actions in this “sensitive area” and the supreme leader for his “guidance” in the nuclear negotiations. On Monday, the parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, a former chief nuclear negotiator, said the deal was a “good sign” and expressed the hope that the negotiations would “prepare the ground for economic prosperity.”

On Tuesday, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the top Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) commander, thanked “these dear negotiators” for their “honest attempts” and resistance to the US on key “red line” issues. Jafari’s comments are particularly significant. The IRGC has been a bastion of hard-line opposition to any concessions to the US and its allies, and is closely aligned with the supreme leader.

Khamenei’s cautionary comments yesterday came after a week of silence that allowed the government to sell the deal. As supreme leader, he has the final say in foreign and defence policy but is compelled to balance between the various factions within the regime. Having given the green light for the talks to proceed, Khamenei did not denounce the major concessions made by negotiators. Rather he insisted that the final agreement include an immediate end to all sanctions and the exclusion of military facilities from international inspections.

No timetable for ending sanctions has been decided. The US is insisting that any sanctions relief will only occur after Iran implements Washington’s demands to wind back its nuclear programs. Moreover, the Obama administration has maintained that the sanctions will not be lifted, only suspended, allowing for them to be “snapped back” into operation on any pretext.

For Iran, however, lifting the sanctions that have devastated the country’s economy is the top priority. “[The] sanctions should be completely lifted on the first day of the agreement, otherwise why would we have been negotiating?” Khamenei exclaimed. Warning against US duplicity, he said: “The whole problem comes now [to] the details that should be discussed, because the other side is stubborn, difficult to deal with, breaks promises and is a backstabber.”

Undoubtedly Khamenei’s comments are aimed at placating more hard-line elements of the regime that have been critical of aspects of the agreement, as well as signalling to Iran’s negotiators that significant sanctions relief is critical to the acceptance of any final deal. Last Friday, Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the conservative Kayhan newspaper, complained about the agreement: “We should say that we gave a saddled horse and received a torn bridle [in return].”

Significantly, however, public criticism has been largely limited to the terms of the agreement. No prominent figure is calling for an end to the talks. A further indication that a political shift is underway was the official response to a group of several protesters who gathered outside the parliament on Tuesday to voice their opposition to the agreement. Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli warned that “illegal gatherings” would not be allowed in the future.

While an agreement might not yet eventuate, the willingness of the regime to cut a deal with Washington underscores its thoroughly bourgeois character. For all the anti-American posturing and ritualised chants of “Death to America,” the clerical ruling elites that emerged from the 1979 revolution are not opposed to imperialism as such, but rather have been seeking an adjustment in their relations with the US and other major powers.

Iran’s economy has been hammered by US-led sanctions. Oil exports have halved since 2012 to about 1 million barrels a day and the economic impact, including on government revenues, has been compounded by falling international prices. Iran has been largely cut off from the international banking and financial system, blocking access to an estimated $100 billion in oil revenues. Foreign investment has virtually ground to a halt. The economy contracted sharply in 2012 and 2013, with minimal growth subsequently.

Sections of business and the upper middle classes are backing the nuclear deal as a means ending the economic blockade and opening up commercial opportunities and career prospects. Rouzbeh Pirouz, a fund manager, enthusiastically told the New York Times: “There now is the potential of lots of foreign investment coming into the country. These are very exciting times.”

At the same time, the Iranian bourgeoisie as a whole is petrified that the country’s deep economic and social crisis will fuel political unrest among the working class and the urban and rural poor. Rampant inflation has been accompanied by high levels of unemployment, especially among young people—a quarter of whom are officially jobless. While inflation has fallen from more than 40 percent in 2012 to 17 percent, the price rises for basic food staples have been far higher and affect the poorest social layers. An estimated 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. In December and January, auto workers and teachers took industrial action to demand higher wages.

President Rouhani and his government have attempted to promote the nuclear agreement as a means of reviving the Iranian economy and lifting living standards. However, far from ending the social crisis, the ending of economic sanctions will only intensify the demands for further pro-market restructuring and deeper inroads into the social position of the working class. Like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s previous administration, the current government has already bowed to International Monetary Fund demands for the slashing of price subsidies, hitting working people hard. Whatever the final outcome of the talks, the assault on the social conditions of the working class will only intensify.

Amidst widespread strikes, limited turnout at French union demonstrations

Stephanes Hugues

Despite high-profile strikes at French airports and public radio, and a limited one-day strike in the public sector, workers largely stayed away from protest marches called yesterday by French union confederations—the Stalinist CGT (General Confederation of Labour), FO (Workers’ Force) FSU (United Trade Union Federation) and Solidaires (Solidarity).

Nearly 800 trade union locals in both the public and private sectors had called for workers to strike on Thursday, according to the CGT. About 24 percent of primary school teachers and more than 35 percent of high school teachers went on strike, based on trade union estimates.

From a first survey from 12 regions including Lyon, Lille, Créteil and Paris, the Ministry of Education claimed that only about 10 percent of teachers had joined the strike.

Air traffic controllers are carrying out a rolling strike throughout April against attacks on their working conditions and pensions whilst the government refuses to even negotiate with them. Radio France workers have been on strike for over three weeks because of cuts and redundancies due to the government having taken back a big part of the company budget.

There is deep anger in the working class over austerity policies of the Socialist Party (PS) government of President François Hollande and the European Union. The government’s constant announcement of new austerity measures as unemployment surged has discredited its economic policy. In a poll last November it received a 3 percent approval rating—roughly six times less than the 17 percent approval rating in France of the Al Qaeda-linked Islamic State (IS) militia that US, French and allied forces are bombing in Iraq and Syria.

Nonetheless, this anger does not find expression through the traditional channels through which the union bureaucracy has sought to channel opposition in the working class over previous decades.

The number of demonstrations organized by the union bureaucracy yesterday, only 80, was down from the 200 demonstrations in 2010. Then, several million workers marched against pension cuts and austerity measures of the government of conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Yesterday’s demonstration in downtown Paris gathered union officials bussed in from cities and regions across France. The CGT improbably claimed there were 120,000 people in the Paris march, while police claimed there were 32,000.

The main demonstrations outside of Paris were in Marseille (45,000 according to the CGT, 7,000 according to police), Bordeaux (CGT: 10,000; police: 4,700), Lyon (organizers: 7,000; police: 4,200), Toulouse (organizers: 8,000; police: 4,000), Nantes, Rouen and Rennes.

Even taking union over-estimates as good coin, the presence of 300,000 people that marched yesterday reflects a collapse of working class participation in such protests from five years ago.

On the one hand, this reflects the reactionary politics of the French union bureaucracy. In line with pseudo-left organizations such as the Left Front and the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), it openly called for a victory of the PS in the 2012 presidential elections, thus helping to elect Hollande.

Broad sections of union officialdom, terrorized by mass anger at the PS, are hysterically opposed even to toothless, symbolic protests against the government, such as yesterday’s march.

The CFDT (the French Democratic Confederation of Work) and number of smaller trade unions refused to join the strike and protest marches, openly denouncing them and supporting the PS. Two days before the strike, the General Secretary of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, absurdly stated in a radio interview that “there is no austerity in France”.

Above all, however, broad masses of workers in France and across Europe are deeply alienated from the union bureaucracy and the pseudo-left parties of the affluent middle class that gravitate around it.

Only a few weeks after coming to power in the January 25 elections in Greece, Syriza repudiated its programme of stopping the drive for austerity imposed by preceding governments. Having worked out an agreement with the EU in February, the Syriza government is continuing and deepening the austerity drive of the European banks and the IMF against the Greek workers.

Over the last decade, masses of workers in France have marched in dozens of one-day protests supported by Syriza’s French co-thinkers, that did nothing to halt an onslaught of social cuts and imperialist wars imposed by the French bourgeoisie.

Masses of people remember the endorsement given to Hollande three years ago by the pseudo-left parties and the unions. What is emerging is an explosive political situation with revolutionary implications, in which the mass anger in the working class can, of necessity, only find expression through mass action outside the normal channels of the political establishment.

Greece makes €450 million payment to International Monetary Fund

Christoph Dreier

Greece transferred around €450 million to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday. As a result, Athens has repaid its second major loan without being able to access new assistance. The country had already paid the IMF €1.5 billion at the end of March.

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis had promised the repayment of the second loan over the weekend in a meeting with IMF head Christine Lagarde. “The Greek government always fulfills its obligations to all creditors and intends to continue to do so,” he said.

In the face of the dire social conditions in Greece, such statements are an unmistakable commitment to further social cuts and privatisations. Five years of dictates from Brussels have produced an unemployment rate of over 25 percent. The healthcare system has collapsed, and even malnourishment has become a mass phenomenon.

Under these conditions, the Greek government led by the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) has scraped together the money to repay the IMF loan. At the end of February, it was reported that the government had borrowed large sums from the pension fund to avoid state bankruptcy.

At the end of March, the government then requested a pay-out from the state healthcare insurer of €50 million. The Athens Metro was also to lend the state money. To date, the government has borrowed €600 million from companies, including the electricity and water provider. Some €120 million intended to finance hospitals was retained by the state.

In general, these loans have a very short time frame, and are aimed at avoiding a budget crisis while the government is in talks with the so-called troika of the IMF, European Central Bank and European Union (EU) commission. Athens is hoping to secure the pay-out of the last tranche of the bailout loan of €7.2 billion.

The IMF loan paid off on Thursday was part of the first loan received by Greece from the IMF and euro group member states in 2010. The payment of these funds was tied at the time to strict austerity measures that threw the economy into recession and saw state debt explode from 113 percent of GDP in 2008 to 175 percent in 2013.

According to the British organisation Jubilee Debt Campaign, the IMF has already cashed in on €2.5 billion in interest on the loans. But the bailout loans are being used above all to repay the European banks who held Greek debt and were paid horrendously high interest rates in spite of Greece being practically bankrupt.

Five years later, the IMF is now demanding its money back. Since budgetary conditions have worsened due to the austerity measures, Greece is once again dependent on more loans for the repayments. However, the troika has tied the payment of such loans to further privatisations, structural reforms and budget cuts.

It is clear that the brutal austerity dictates will not result in the improvement of the Greek economy or a reduction of the debt burden. European governments are much more concerned with offloading the burden of the crisis on to the European working class, with Greece as a model.

With the unconditional repayment of the IMF loans, the Syriza government has once again made clear that it is prepared to do anything to support this policy. By plundering pension funds, healthcare firms and insurance companies to satisfy the IMF, Syriza has made itself even more dependent upon the troika’s bailout loans. If the troika decides to let the talks break down, these short-term loans will not be repaid.

Greece is unable even to secure fresh capital from the markets. Greece paid 2.97 percent this week for six-month government bonds. The €15 billion limit imposed by the creditors for such short-term financing has already been reached.

Further loans totaling around €6 billion are due for repayment by the end of May, which Greece will only be able to repay with the help of loans. Otherwise, state bankruptcy looms and potential exclusion from the eurozone.

Troika representatives have thus far rejected all reform proposals and privatisations from the Greek government as inadequate. The latest move came on Thursday when the creditors imposed a six-day deadline on the government to produce new suggestions in areas of social security, the labour market and privatisations.

The minister for government coordination, Alekos Flambouraris, said following this that he was “100 percent certain” that an agreement would be reached between the troika and Athens by April 24. This is the date when EU finance ministers will meet in Riga for a long-planned conference at which a decision on the release of the last bailout tranche could be reached.

The fact that Syriza has accepted the austerity dictates and is now merely negotiating with the troika over details was clear during Alexis Tsipras’ visit to Russia. Although Tsipras spoke to Putin about the possible financing of infrastructure projects, he said nothing about potential loans that could reduce the dependence on the euro group. On the question of EU sanctions against Russia, against which Greece could, in principle, lodge a veto, Tsipras remained vague.

“With all of the pleasantries between Mr. Putin and Mr. Tsipras: he did not abandon the line that we expect from him,” commented EU parliament president Martin Schulz of Social Democratic Party on German television ZDF’s Heute Journal program.

The increasing attacks on democratic rights also make clear that Syriza is preparing to press ahead with further attacks on the working class. Syriza representatives have exploited clashes on the fringe of anarchist protests to call for a massive build-up of the state’s repressive powers. Deputy Minister of the Interior Giannis Panousis demanded the immediate reestablishment of the hated communal police, which fell victim to the previous government’s austerity measures.

Along with the police, the military is also excluded from budget cuts. On 15 March, Tsipras signed a contract for the modernisation of five surveillance aircraft at a cost to the state of €500 million. Defence Minister Panos Kammenos of the right-wing Independent Greeks (ANEL) demanded the expenditure in order to be able to meet NATO requirements.

Obama’s criminal war against Yemen

Bill Van Auken

As the bombing campaign against Yemen extends into its third week, the Obama administration has stepped up direct US involvement in what constitutes an illegal war that threatens to precipitate a massive humanitarian catastrophe.

The nature of this war is indisputably defined by the character of its combatants. Backed by the US, the most powerful and aggressive imperialist country in the world, is a coalition of reactionary tyrants and royal parasites consisting of the monarchical dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states together with the savagely repressive regime headed by General al-Sisi in Egypt.

Their target is Yemen, the poorest country of the Middle East. Even before Saudi and other Gulf states sent warplanes to drop tons of explosives on crowded urban neighborhoods and mobilized warships to block all food and fuel imports from entering its harbors, over half of the population lived in poverty and roughly half the country’s children suffered from malnutrition.

Now, this desperate situation has grown immeasurably worse. Basic infrastructure is being bombed into rubble. Food supplies have grown critically short, while electricity, including power to pump water, has been cut off. Attempts by aid agencies to deliver relief have been thwarted repeatedly by the Saudi-led bombings.

While official UN estimates place the number killed at over 600, this includes only those reported by medical facilities, with the real death toll far higher. Thousands more have been maimed. The overwhelming majority of the casualties are civilians, with the bodies of entire families being pulled from the rubble of their homes.

This death toll may soon skyrocket. UNICEF has warned that if the bombing continues, more than a quarter of a million children are at risk of starving to death.

US officials acknowledged this week that the Pentagon is playing a decisive role in making these war crimes possible. It has accelerated the delivery of bombs, missiles and other weapons to Saudi Arabia for the purpose of killing more Yemenis and boosting the profits of the US arms merchants. Just between 2010 and 2014, the Obama administration reached $90 billion worth of arms deals with the Saudi monarchy, making it the top US customer.

On a trip to Riyadh, Antony Blinken, the deputy secretary of state, revealed that the US has also stepped up its intelligence sharing and logistical support for the Saudi-led onslaught, establishing a “joint coordination planning cell” in the Saudi capital. McClatchy News cited unnamed Pentagon officials as saying that this operation is being headed by a two-star general from US Central Command.

And on Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that US Air Force KC-135 Stratotankers have begun daily aerial refueling of Saudi warplanes, to allow continuous airstrikes.

Thus, the US military is not only shipping the bombs to drop on Yemen, but providing Saudi pilots with the targets to be struck and the fuel to reach them. The Obama administration’s hands are covered in the blood of the thousands of civilian victims.

US Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a bellicose defense of this intervention Wednesday, blaming Iran for the crisis in Yemen for allegedly providing aid to the Houthi rebel movement that has established control over much of the country.

“Iran needs to recognize that the United States is not going to stand by while the region is destabilized, or while people engage, you know, in overt warfare across ... international boundaries,” he said in a PBS News interview. Kerry vowed that Washington “would stand up to interference that is inappropriate or against international law, or contrary to the region’s stability.”

One really has to go back to the 1930s to find such levels of lying to justify imperialist aggression. “Operation Himmler” comes to mind, when Germany’s Nazi regime used propaganda about “Polish aggression” to justify its Blitzkrieg against Warsaw.

The Houthis have not crossed any “international boundaries” to wage war, and neither has Iran. The Houthis are an indigenous movement whose successes stem from the hatred among broad sections of the population for both the old regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi—the puppet installed by Riyadh and Washington—and Western intervention in Yemen. As for Iran, for all of the denunciations, neither the US nor anyone else has produced a shred of evidence of its direct or even indirect involvement in the fighting. Those violating the sovereignty of Yemen are the Saudi and Gulf State potentates backed by Washington.

As for the United States “standing up” for the “region’s stability,” who does Kerry think he’s kidding? The interventions of US imperialism, with the direct collaboration of the Saudi monarchy, have plunged the entire Middle East into chaos and bloodshed—from the destruction of Iraq, to the transformation of Libya into a militia-ravaged “failed state,” to the ongoing carnage inflicted upon Syria in a US, Saudi-orchestrated war for regime change spearheaded by Islamist militias.

In Yemen itself, the US destabilized the country through a protracted campaign of drone warfare that has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people.

For the last several years, the Obama administration and the US military and intelligence complex have painted Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as the premier terror threat to the US “homeland” and the US drone campaign as a model “success” in the “war on terror.”

Now, in the face of the Houthi rebellion, the campaign against AQAP is a dead letter. While elements of the Islamist group have overrun entire cities in the past week, no one even suggests that the Saudi warplanes continuously bombing Yemen should take any action against them.

This is no accident. AQAP is the most militantly anti-Houthi force in the country and therefore a de facto ally in the US-Saudi coalition. AQAP, like the Saudi regime itself, is viciously sectarian in its hatred of the Houthi movement, which is based among the Yemeni Zaydi population, a Shia-related religious group comprising up to 40 percent of the population.

Washington has virtually ceased even attempting to invent new lies to justify such head-spinning realignments. The Obama administration has said next to nothing about this latest war being carried out behind the backs of the American people.

The “war on terror,” “human rights,” “democracy” and even “regional stability” are all equally fraudulent pretexts for naked aggression aimed at solidifying US hegemony over the Middle East and its vast energy resources.

This predatory imperialist offensive threatens to ignite a region-wide conflagration, even as Washington deliberately ratchets up military tensions with both Russia and China. The threat of these separate conflicts coalescing into a third world war grows by the day.

Outside of a political struggle to mobilize the international working class in a struggle against war and its source, the capitalist system, such a catastrophe is inevitable. The International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site are holding an International May Day Online Rally on May 3 to take forward this fight. We urge workers and youth from every country to join in this rally and take part in a discussion of the international revolutionary socialist perspective that must animate this struggle. Register today at Internationalmayday.org.

Commonwealth Scholarships for International Students in Developing Countries

The Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan (CSFP) is a unique programme. Since its establishment in 1959, it has provided opportunities for over 30,000 citizens of all Commonwealth countries to study in other member countries.

Since the scholarships have traditionally been supported by host governments, the overwhelming majority have been hosted by developed Commonwealth countries.

Now, following the establishment of the CSFP endowment fund, a new strand of Commonwealth Scholarships located in low and middle income countries is available.

Commonwealth Scholarships for Master’s level study are being offered in the following countries:

• Kenya
• Rwanda
• Botswana
• South Africa
• Caribbean (Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago)
• Ghana
• Bangladesh
• Pakistan

WORTH

• Full tuition fees
• Monthly/quarterly stipend (living allowance) set at local rates.
• Arrival allowance (usually) USD 500, to contribute to additional costs incurred in moving to your host country.
• One economy class return airfare between your home and host countries.

ELIGIBILITY

• Be citizens of any Commonwealth country (except that you need to enroll to study in another country other than your own. Students currently studying in their local universities are eligible to transfer).
• Hold a first degree of upper second class Honors standard (or above) in a discipline relevant to that in which study is proposed.

To apply and for more information visit here.