The Spark: Steel, refining asset stripping, British ‘Starlink’, TSSA chaos

This episode of Proletarian Radio examines a series of interlinked crises across Britain's industrial and labor landscape, beginning with the collapse of the Prax refinery in Lindsay, North Lincolnshire, where Phillips 66 is repurposing the site as a storage depot rather than restarting refining—despite its economic viability—highlighting the systemic failure of financial capitalism and state abdication. The episode critiques the UCU's failed strike ballot, blaming outdated databases, poor timing, and a leadership out of touch with members' concerns about job losses, not just pay. In steel, the chaos around British Steel and Liberty Steel is portrayed as a feeding frenzy of global vultures—Norwegian, UAE, Czech, and U.S.-backed investors—seeking asset stripping, while the government’s 'co-investment' rhetoric masks a retreat from public ownership. The episode calls for worker-led renationalisation and occupation of plants. It also exposes the CIA-backed 'European Starlink' project, OpenCosmos, as a military tool disguised as technological independence, and celebrates Italian workers’ resistance at Leonardo Spa factories. Finally, it condemns the TSSA union’s expulsion of former leader Steve Coe, framing it as a purge of dissent and a symptom of deep bureaucratic decay within trade unions. The overarching message is one of urgent working-class self-organisation against capitalist collapse and imperialist war-making.