http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2010/07/communist_subversion_britain

"Manchesters Professor Stefan Berger and Glamorgans Dr Norman LaPorte saw the documents from the East German Communist trade union federation which say that 'substantial sums of money in hard currency' were secretly transferred to the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

The papers also allege the German Democratic Republic provided free holidays for striking miners and their families - courtesy of the union.

The material is published in Prof Berger and Dr LaPortes new, book, Friendly Enemies: Britain and the GDR 1949 to 1990 by Berghahn Books this month."

I may be wrong about this, but I have a memory that the holidays for miners offer was a quite open one. It certainly would have been hard to have kept it secret, wouldn't it, with families involved? "We're going for a nice holiday in Germany children, but you mustn't tell anyone." I don't think so.

I've read the book that Norry LaPorte and Stefan Berger wrote, and it's nothing like the kind of sensationalist drivel the Economist blogger is spouting here. They deal with FDGB relations with the NUM and other British unions in a very matter-of-fact way - after all, these relations, and the delegations and holidays for strikers etc. were no secret. If anything, they are more critical of the fact that the GDR continued selling lignite coal to Britain during the strike.