By Rose Tedeschi
The stripping of titles from Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, until recently known by the courtesy title ‘Prince’, is a desperate, belated and cynical act by a decaying institution. The House of Windsor, that gilded tumour on the body of the nation, has finally been forced to sever one of its most visibly putrid limbs.
But for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends, and for the working class who fund this parasitic circus, this changes nothing. The scandal of Andrew is not an aberration; it is the logical product of the monarchy itself.
For years, the evidence of Andrew’s sordid associations piled up, like the unearned wealth in his bank account. His friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein was an open secret in the corridors of power. We were told it was a lapse in judgement, a mistake. But the timeline reveals a more damning truth: a pattern of conscious, sustained collaboration with a known sex trafficker.
Epstein pled guilty to prostituting minors in 2008. Yet, upon his release in 2010, Andrew saw fit to write to him, plotting a friendly catch-up. Even after being publicly shamed for the photograph of him with the predator in New York’s Central Park, the then-Prince did not sever ties.
The recent unsealed documents from the ‘Epstein files’ reveal the chilling reality: in February 2011, Andrew emailed Epstein to assure him, ‘we are in this together’ and that ‘We’ll play some more soon!!!!’. This email was sent months after Andrew claimed he had severed ties with Epstein. This is not the language of a duped acquaintance; it is the solidarity of a co-conspirator, a man who believes his royal status places him above the law and common morality.
Windsor’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson played the same duplicitous game, publicly condemning Epstein while privately sending him emails calling him a ‘supreme friend’. This two-faced performance comes naturally to the aristocracy, who on the one hand believe they have a birthright to do as they will to whomever they will, and on the other instinctively understand that their privilege is a hangover from bygone ages.
The palace’s statement, oozing with regal condescension, now declares that Andrew will be stripped of his ‘style, titles and honours’ and evicted from his grace-and-favour mansion. They offer ‘utmost sympathies’ to the ‘victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.’ This is pure theatre.
The monarchy is not acting out of moral conviction; it is engaging in damage control. Andrew has become a liability to the brand, a threat to the carefully managed façade of a benevolent, unifying institution. He is being sacrificed not for justice, but for the preservation of the Crown itself.
This entire spectacle begs a fundamental question: why do we care about these people at all?
In the 21st century, why are working people forced to debate the titles, residences, and reputations of a family of unaccountable, state-subsidised multi-millionaires? We are told the monarchy is a symbol of national unity, yet it is the very embodiment of inequality. It represents a system of inherited wealth and power, a society where your birth, not your merit, determines your station in life.
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor did not become a privileged, arrogant and allegedly predatory individual by accident. He was moulded by an institution that teaches its members they are born to rule, born to be served, and born to be shielded from consequence. His sense of entitlement is the very essence of monarchy. He is what the system is designed to produce.
The working class must draw revolutionary conclusions from this sordid affair. The problem is not just one ‘bad apple’ like Andrew. The problem is the entire rotten tree – the institution of the monarchy and the capitalist state it adorns.
The monarchy is a crucial ideological prop for the ruling class. It mystifies power, dressing up class rule in the pomp and ceremony of tradition. It teaches us to bow, to know our place, and to be content with the crumbs from the table of the rich. It exists to legitimise a system of exploitation, where the wealth created by our labour is siphoned off to fund the luxuries of the idle rich, from Andrew’s mansion and Charles’s vast estates to Jeff Bezos’ and Elon Musk’s space rockets.
The call to abolish the monarchy is not merely a democratic demand; it is a class demand. It is a demand to smash the symbols of hereditary privilege and to seize the immense wealth they hoard. The palaces, the land, the art collections, all of it was built on the backs of generations of working people and must be expropriated for social need. But beyond that, the monarchy exists as a reactionary Bonapartist regime in waiting, should the need arise for the capitalist class to ‘suspend’ democracy.
Let the fate of Andrew be a lesson. These people are not our betters. They are parasites. Their ‘honour’ is a sham, their ‘service’ a myth. Our solidarity lies not with crowns and titles, but with Virginia Giuffre and all victims of abuse and exploitation. Our fight is not for a more palatable monarchy, but for its total abolition.
Let’s build a workers’ movement powerful enough to sweep away this archaic relic and the entire capitalist system it represents. Let’s borrow a slogan from our American cousins, proclaim loudly ‘No Kings!’ and make Charles our last.
