The saying goes “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”. But for the big bust of George Mitchell at Queen’s University Belfast, there was no fall… In fact it simply vanished, without a trace!
George Mitchell – former US senator, ‘peace’ envoy, Chancellor of QUB, and celebrated midwife of the Good Friday Agreement – long counted among the ‘great and the good’ of society, now joins the hall of tarnished and disgraced statesmen implicated in the Epstein scandal.
His bronze bust is gone. His name has been stripped from a QUB institute and a prestigious scholarship. His portrait has been removed from the Maine State House. QUB, for their part, reassured us that as a “civic institution with a global reputation for leadership in peace, reconciliation, and justice, [it] must ensure its honours reflect the highest standards”.
It’s comforting to know they draw the line somewhere. Even if that line appears remarkably flexible when it comes to war crimes, genocide – and to be sure, even connections to paedophiles. A cynic might even suspect that it wasn’t so much the (long-known) relations of Mitchell with Epstein that prompted action, but the public outcry following the latest release of Epstein files.
The trigger for this change of heart was the January release of millions of files by the US Justice Department – documents that tied the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to dozens of billionaires, politicians, royals, academics and state officials.
Mitchell’s name appears over 300 times. This includes correspondence with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for paedophilia, a note in Epstein’s birthday book where Mitchell described their friendship as a “blessing”, and numerous references to meetings. Mitchell has denied any wrongdoing, yet records show meetings, shared flights, and stays at Epstein’s properties long after his crimes were public knowledge. These revelations come on top of earlier accusations from Virginia Giuffre – who alleged she was trafficked by Epstein and directed to have sex with his associates, including Mitchell.
These disgraceful links are not exclusive to QUB. Mitchell maintains relationships across many academic institutions in Ireland such as Ulster University, Trinity College Dublin, and Dublin City University. He – alongside known sex pest (and another one of Epstein’s pals) Bill Clinton – was awarded the Freedom of the City of Belfast. Incidentally, this was for their role in the Good Friday Agreement – the pantheon of “great statesmen” behind that deal now reads differently: war criminal Tony Blair, corrupted Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, and again Mitchell himself.
What the Epstein files show is how politicians, financiers, royalty, academia – those who govern and legitimise capitalism – are intertwined in a network of privilege, wealth and absolute moral decay. From the man formerly known as Prince Andrew, to the endless parade of cover-ups in the North of Ireland, we see a pattern. Capitalism does not simply produce inequality, but a layer elevated above society, insulated from consequences, and bound together by shared material interests. These are the people that negotiate ‘peace’ deals, chair foundations, and sit on university boards – the neatly dubbed ‘Epstein class’.
Removing a bust or renaming a scholarship is not enough. To truly rid ourselves of these scum of the Earth, we must fight to overthrow this sick system in its entirety.
