THERE is something very uplifting in the state of the modern world, if recent events are anything to go by.

The spirt of the 21st century is surely not with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and similar unpleasant demagogues, but with those ordinary Hungarians who passed out water and sweets to the defiantly collective march of Syrian refugees to the Austrian border.

And it’s with with ordinary Viennese people, who so crowded the railway station on a similar mission that they were asked to stop coming in such numbers; and with clapping and cheering German citizens in Munich who showed lessons to some Britons who have yet to learn that humility and compassion are the hallmarks of civilisation.

A decisive shift in public opinion shows that humanity is not with the detractors of the father of little Aylan — those who sneeringly examined the photograph of a tiny corpse so as to discern supposed affluence. It is with mass outpourings of genuine empathy.

Empathy has also fuelled the most positive aspects of Jeremy Corbyn’s exceptional Labour leadership campaign. Despite the unbelievably hostile media, the personal humanity and warmth of Corbyn’s campaign has overwhelmed the collective consciousness.

Might this mood turn the appalling statistic that 2,380 people died within a year of DWP fit-for-work assessments into a campaign for a society that denounces such aberrations?

Trade unions are poised to collectively mobilise against the laws that threaten collective bargaining. An RMT motion for the forthcoming TUC calls for “the possibility of assisting in organising generalised strike action should legal action be taken against any affiliate in connection with these new laws.” Campaigners are also gearing up for a struggle against the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. Unions needs to work out how this next period can be dominated by a campaign to kill the Bills, plural.

They also need to grapple with past fascination with “social Europe.” A GMB motion, reaffirming this, also notes “that the current reality is far from that vision.” It could never have been a reality — not while the bedrock of the EU is the free movement of capital.

Internal labour market strategies of developed nations presume weak unions and low labour costs. They require a ready supply of cheap labour to choose from and an abundant just-in-time flow of imported raw materials and finished goods. Both supplies are fed by a mechanism of perpetual bloody wars, both internal and interventionist.

Trade unionists in Brighton next week have a marvellous opportunity to capitalise on this growing new humanitarian mood, which could encompass not only increasing scepticism about the 21st-century EU but also the feeling of positive solidarity with those dispossessed by the conflicts. They should call on the 90 per cent of the nation whose interests coincide with migrants and asylum-seekers to make common cause.

The CWU was right to propose an amendment highlighting the “negative portrayal” of the issue that has attempted to “generate a xenophobic mindset thus de?ecting attention away from the EU being redesigned to the detriment of workers.”

Those fleeing to Europe from Africa, the Middle East and Asia are all very different: they may be asylum-seekers fleeing persecution focused on their identity, they may be refugees from territory ravaged by imperialist aggression or they may also be seekers of a better life. The greatest despoiler of the earth, the US, lauds as heroic pioneers those who carved out a life for themselves and their families in that country’s west, even when that meant stealing land and mechanically cleansing it of those of a different kind.

Britain’s progressives need to provide a voice to those from migrant communities who can help build understanding about this. Buttressing the foundations of “Fortress Europe” for reasons of personal self-interest, whether to protect export markets or to solidify benefits, is no sound way forward. In difficult times, a true humanitarian equally favours the interests of all people in a just settlement.