Isis Smyth, Liverpool South Socialist Party
Since November 2025, millions of documents in the ‘Epstein files’ have been released. The scale of the horrors committed by sex-trafficker Jeffery Epstein (worth almost $600 million when he died) are being further revealed. So too his links with exorbitantly wealthy ‘pals’ throughout the entire capitalist establishment.
One thing is clear: the Epstein files are not an aberration but an insight into what keeps this deeply unequal, exploitative capitalist machine running.
In Britain, the files have implicated not only ex-Prince Andrew but also Peter Mandelson, who has long been influential in Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. Until September last year he was Starmer’s appointed US ambassador.
Starmer’s Labour government says it wants to halve violence against women and girls in ten years. Yet, scandalously women’s refuge centres are in danger of closing due to a lack of funding, leaving vulnerable women at risk of homelessness and violence. Police forces are failing to respond adequately to violence against women and girls. But resources are found to arrest those protesting peacefully in solidarity with Palestine Action!
They argue there is no money. But look at all the wealth of those implicated in the Epstein files! We could house, feed, and clothe all in Britain, and still have plenty left over!
Women’s rights have come a long way in the past hundred years, but it’s clear we still have far to go. Legal battles have been won, and in Britain in law women and men are considered ‘equal’. So why is the gender pay gap at 15.4%? Why are one in four women raped or sexually assaulted? Why are there constant reports exposing sexism and misogyny inside capitalism’s institutions, including the police?
Capitalism depends on a weak, divided working class. It systematically exploits the working class, and it is within the capitalists’ interests to oppress women workers doubly so – as workers and as women.
Capitalism cannot smash sexism and misogyny or ‘the patriarchy’ because these are not separate from but part and parcel of the system itself. Only socialism, operating based on principles of need, not profit, and striving for equality, can lay the basis for sexism to be defeated once and for all.
Socialist Party branches across the country will be holding public meetings on how we can build the fight for women’s liberation and socialism this International Women’s Day.
Get in contact to find your local branch and join the fight for socialism!
