EX-PRINCE Andrew’s public disgrace has rocked the British ruling class, with the King stripping his younger brother of his ‘prince’ title and evicting him from his mansion, with it all splashed by the capitalist media across its front pages.
This followed on from the previous removal of his prestigious Duke of York title last week, and the removal of the ‘Duchess’ title from his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson. They are also to be evicted from their rent-free, 30-room Royal Lodge mansion near Windsor Castle.
Details of the then Prince’s alleged sexual abuse of a minor and his consorting with the late convicted paedophile Geoffrey Epstein, along with the pair’s corruption in receiving tens of thousands of pounds from an American multi-millionairess, plus his continued lying about his Epstein relationship, sealed his fate.
Not since the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936 has such a crisis engulfed Britain’s head of state and the royal family. Then, in October 1937, as Britain prepared for war with fascist Germany, Edward, then Duke of Windsor and his wife, visited Germany, against the advice of the British government, and met Adolf Hitler, giving full Nazi salutes during the visit.
Writing in the New York Daily News on 13 December 1966, the Duke wrote that in 1937 he persuaded Hitler that ‘it was in Britain’s interest and in Europe’s too, that Germany be encouraged to strike east and smash Communism forever’.
The Duke’s true pro-Nazi sympathies were further revealed by comments reportedly made as governor of the Bahamas in 1940.
‘After the war is over and Hitler will crush the Americans … we’ll take over … They [the British] don’t want me as their king, but I’ll be back as their leader’, adding that ‘it would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler was overthrown.’
Underlying the abdication crisis of 1936 was, it was believed, an attempt to force a pro-Nazi king off the throne as World War 2 with Germany loomed.
Now, in 2025, a completely bankrupt British economy has exposed the corruption and venality among the royal parasites, and cutting the toxic Andrew loose is not just an attempt to save the credibility and dignity of the royal family itself, but to shore up the head of state as a rallying figure as the ruling class prepares for war against Russia and for war against the working class at home.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the social scale, a report of appalling and rising levels of deprivation in working class areas of England was published on Thursday by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).
Severe deprivation is spread across the country, with 65% of local authorities containing at least one highly deprived neighbourhood, up from 61% in 2019, it reported.
Seven areas in Blackpool are also among the 10 most deprived, alongside one in Hastings and one in Rotherham. Half of the neighbourhoods in Middlesborough are very deprived, making it the council with the highest proportion, ahead of Birmingham and Hartlepool.
More than one in five neighbourhoods in the North East and the North West are in the most deprived category, compared with around one in 25 in London, the South West and the East of England, and one in 33 in the South East.
Government minister McGovern said the statistics were a ‘damning indictment of a system that has left some communities broken, councils pushed to a financial cliff edge and residents facing the brunt of service cuts’.
Previous policies had ‘barely begun to break the cycle of deprivation’, leading to stagnant local growth and ‘loss of hope’, she said.
Dr Megan Armstrong, associate professor at University College London, said that working class communities in places which formed the foundation of Britain’s industrial economy had been ‘left to bear the brunt’ of de-industrialisation ‘with few alternatives or support’.
She added: ‘Successive governments have failed to reinvest or repair the damage, instead pursuing policies of austerity and privatisation that have further deepened inequality. Breaking that cycle requires sustained investment, structural reform, and genuine community engagement.’
Now is the time for the working class to take action, during this desperate crisis of the capitalist state and government, to smash its super-austerity and war plans with a general strike to bring down Starmer’s Labour government and go forward to a Workers Government and a socialist planned economy in Britain.
The question of the hour is for the millions of trade unionists trade unionists to demand their leaders recall the TUC to organise a general strike to overthrow this government before it completes its police-state preparations to smash the working class and its trade union organisations. If they do not recall the TUC for general strike action, those leaders must be removed and replaced at once.
There is no middle road or parliamentary solution for the working class. The Social Revolution is the only way forward to socialism and a planned nationalised economy to satisfy the needs of the working class and the youth.
