Currently Hungary is in the limelight, hardly a news report anywhere in the world goes by without images of thousands of refugees entering the country, trying to board trains out of the country, suffering ill treatment at the hands of the Hungarian authorities. Contrastingly, there are also pictures of volunteers helping or trying to help desperate families camping out in railways stations, walking on the sides of motorways or along railway lines.

After weeks of participating in the despicable, racist bile being thrown at the thousands of desperate Asian and African refugees making their way to Europe, David Cameron has announced that he would allow 20,000 people to find refuge in Britain over the next five years. This announcement is the very definition of a political fudge, but it is one which will have fatal consequences for many innocent people.

On Saturday 5 September, whilst the Pakistani ruling class celebrated a war and praised its general, the  workers in the Badar 313 factory near Gujranwala were suffering the hellish conditions of capitalism

“The immigrants get all the jobs and houses, while the Italians - or British, or French… - get nothing! The government should think of Italians first - or British, or French first!” How many times do we hear this kind of thinking being hyped up by the TV and press, especially the gutter press, and right-wing demagogues?

100 years ago, on 5th September 1915, a small group of international socialists gathered in the tiny Swiss village of Zimmerwald. This was the first attempt to unite those socialists who were opposed to the War.

The current refugee crisis has brought out some of the horrors of capitalist society, as well as the contrast between the basic human solidarity of ordinary working people and the cold calculation and callousness of capitalist rulers in Europe and elsewhere.