THE FIRST year of the Carter administration has been one of severe attacks on the US working class. Civil rights were threatened in a number of areas, The Hyde Amendment virtually ended abortions on Medicaid. Since a third of all abortsons were funded br Medicaid, this is a serious sethack for working class women. Allen Bakke, a white engineer, got a court to rule in his favour that positive discrimina tion for blacks in college entry was illegal, while formes beauty queen Anita Bryant organised a nationwide anti gay campaign.
la the labour movement itself things were more positive. Steelworkers Fight Back organised a serious opposition to the right wing leadership of the steeiworkers union and the end of the year saw a national miners strike in defence of union nights.
The dominant political issue in Canada continues to be the national Quebecois government, clected at the cnd of 1976, has spent most of the year preparing a nationai referendum Canadian ruling class has organised an anti-Quebec campare. through fear of the bourgeois than of the militant Quebec working class.
in a worsening economic situation the Canadian unions have tried to negotiate a British-style Social with a signal lack of Parti Anti-black demonstration in Chicago PQ SOLesS. The end pf the vent sim revelations of the extensive veillance operations carried out by the RCMP, the federal security police, against working class and Quebec nationalist organisations. One of the wrongs objects of the RCMP's attention was SuT- the Trotskyist movement. The three groups of supporters of the Fourch intation HCIT democracy fell swoop.
Socialist unified in August to The