WHILE THE Tories squirm at Scott's revelations of double-dealing, incompetence of lies Labour postures as beyond reproach.
But the outrage from Labour's front bench over the Scott Report sits uncomfortably with the fact that it was a Labour government which first licensed the export in 1978 of Hawks to Indonesia when the genocidal campaign of the Indonesian armed forces in East Timor was at its height.
Support for East Timor from many party activists and some MPs, contrasts with a leadership which continues to be compromised by strategic, commercial and diplomatic considerations.
While expressing concern at human rights abuses by the Indonesian regime, they use the official secrecy cloaking arms contracts to argue that they lack sufficient information.
Indonesian atrocities are well-documented by Amnesty International. What more do they need to know? Do they intend to honour secret arms deals signed by the Tories?
They say that only once in office will they make decisions on individual countries within the framework of general arms trade policy, taking human rights and UN resolutions into account. But this did not stop Robin Cook calling for an arms embargo against Nigeria.
The refusal to make a commitment leaves a Labour government with a get-out clause when big business and the mandarins in the Foreign Office and MOD turn on the heat.
The arms trade is central to the effort of Britain's ruling class to project its influence across the world, both because it finances military development, enabling Britain to match or surpass its imperialist rivals and maintain its supremacy over the "Third World", and because British arms are used by client regimes in pursuit of British strategic objectives.
This is true in Turkey, where British arms are used against the Kurds to keep the resource-rich region "safe" for British investors, and likewise in Indonesian-occupied East Timor and West Papua.
Blair's craven support for the arms trade should be no surprise. Every Labour government has supported Britain's position as a world power.
However, the Scott Report gives internationalists a chance to exploit the contradiction between rhetoric and reality and tear the party away from its equivocation on arms to Indonesia. Now is the time for a political hammer blow for East Timor in the Labour Party.