Say what you like about Kim Howells, the man’s got some nerve. A few months ago the Foreign Office minister was calling “for Britain and the Saudi monarchy to work more closely together on a basis of “shared values”” – which, while it is not entirely clear which values he was thinking of, might well include such time-honoured principles as “paying little regard to international law” and “pervasive discrimination” against women; or, alternatively, “systematic and multiple violations of due process and fair trial rights”, “[s]trictly enforced gender segregation”, and “arbitrary detention, mistreatment and torture of detainees”.

Mr Howells has now helpfully clarified what he meant by arranging this neat little photo opportunity in Colombia, posted on the Foreign Office website, in which he gets rather chummy with the High Mountain Battalion of the Colombian Army. According to the Guardian,

“Surrounding the smiling face of the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells in a picture taken in the Colombian region of Sumapaz are a general linked to paramilitary death squads and soldiers of a notorious unit of the Colombian army accused, including by Amnesty International, of torturing and killing trade unionists. …

“Howells is pictured with the High Mountain Brigades, a unit held responsible for the killing of trade union activists, peasants and anti-narcotics police during the past three years.

“Behind him stand the Colombian defence minister, Juan Santos, and General Mario Montoya, head of the Colombian army, reports of whose collaboration with paramilitary death squads and drug traffickers and links with disappearances and killings – including leaked CIA reports – were cited last year by US congressional leaders as part of the reason for the suspension of tens of millions of dollars of US military aid to the south American regime.”

It’s fascinating, if more than a little frightening, to watch the Labour Party quite so shamefacedly shredding the very principles it’s supposed to stand for. George Monbiot wrote last week about how Peter Hain “trampled … into the mud” the last of his reputation as an anti-Apartheid campaigner, through his receiving funds from a man, Isaac Kaye, who seems to have provided some help in propping up the South African National Party. Now, although British complicity in Colombia’s widespread human rights abuses has been going on for rather a long time, a Foreign Office minister is prepared to stage happy, smiling photo-shoots with some of the soldiers directly responsible. What’s next? Should we expect to see something like this from Howells in the near future?

Most interesting will be the response of British trade unions. The Guardian cites two prominent union-linked spokespeople, both of whom express their disbelief. But what exactly are they going to do about it? If the cheery collaboration with people who torture and kill trade unionists is not enough to warrant at least the threat of divestment from the Labour Party, then what is? And if it isn’t, should British unions’ professions of “solidarity” be considered anything but platitudes?

There is, then, a simple, effective demand that can be made to Labour by the unions: halt the flow of military support to the Colombian government, or see the flow of union funding dry up. At the very least, it might persuade the government to sit up and take notice.