DEATH BY NATURAL CAUSES

'Death by natural causes' was the verdict of a Salford coroner in the case of Augustus Naziebenegua Bandele (33), a Nigerian who died within a day of being refused admission to hospital.

An inspector at the Regent Tyre Co in Broughton, Bandele did not go to work on January 10 because he felt unwell. He complained of stomach pains and the following day developed an excessive thirst. On Friday morning his doctor diagnosed influenza and prescribed some tablets.

Later on Friday, January I2, Bandele became ramblıng in his speech and told Mrs Ann Feeney, who lived with him, he thought he was going to die.

The senior house officer at Salford Royal Hospital, where Bandele arrived by ambulance just before 4 p.m. explained this by saying that a high percentage of people who presented themselves at hospital felt sorry for themselves. 'His temperature was slightly below normal and his pulse was up a little, but blood pressure was all right and he looked reasonably well. Respiration was normal too and I formed the opinion the fast heart beat was related to the influenzal type of illness' Bandele died at home at 4.30 p.m. the following day of pneumonia due to influenza.

The house officer, Dr A. J. Banks, told the court: 'I am sure that if he had been kept in hospital he would have died because of the very rapid and virulent virus' And this -was implicitly accepted by the coroner, who declared the hospital's diagnosis that Bandele did not need hospital treatment 'correct' on the grounds the influenza could not have been detected at the time the diagnosis was madejust 24 hours before he died. Scottish National Party have signed a motion calling for an electoral pact between the two parties.

The proposal is that the Liberals should not challenge the SNP in ten seats, while the SNP would not oppose the Liberals in seven. The corporatist undertones of the deal are reflected in the motion's statement that the pact is necessary to secure a parliament 'which could defend the national interest'. Both parties claim to put 'Scottish interests' first.

The first test of the support the SNP and the Liberals can mobilize in Scotland will be in the forthcoming by-election in Dundee to the seat vacated by Labourite European Commissioner George Thomson. At present both parties are running candidates.

Any alliance in Dundee or elsewhere could only be based on the attempt to channel similar forces to those which the Liberals mobilized in some recent English by-elections, and to marry them to any demoralized or confused sections of workers taken in by the SNP's policies.

This utterly reactionary movement is spending large sums of money on an advertising campaign claiming that the administration of the North Sea oil 'boom' by a Scottish government' would result in higher pensions, better wages and full employment.

Labour and Communist Party leaders in Scotland only succeed giving some credence to this movement by promoting similar illusions concerning the oil 'boom' and by participating in events like the recent Scottish Assembly.

The Scottish working class, locked in a life-and-death struggle with the Tory government to defend basic rights won in decades of common struggle with their English brothers against the British capitalist class will not be misled ty these reactionary diversion i. TV REVIEW ANNE BLAKEMAN Deep in the bowels of the earth under Nebraska in the American mid-west a crew of American' army technicians and scientists man the strategic headquarters.

They control not only the powering mechanisms of 1,000 missiles planted in position across the earth, but the nuclear submarines, the aircraft and all the power which lies in wait for the moment when the red telephone, sitting at the heart of these headquarters and elsewhere, is lifted to give the orders for a full-scale nuclear war.

There are 46 of these bases, all identically equipped and manned, but in the event of such a war, there is also the possibility that, built so far underground though they are, the bases could be wiped out.

To cover this eventuality there are a fleet of planes (of which . one is always flying) which are each manned by a crew of four-three radio operators, two maintenance men, a battle staff of 11 and a steward.

These planes constitute the area of last resort and can command and launch all the missiles and any remaining power that. may exist in such a state of disintegration.

Each plane is in direct touch Each plane has its reg Plant. with the President's These extraordinary elaborate procedures and mechanisms-and others like themwere shown on Alistair Cooke's penultimate episode of 'America' Sunday night. They are the means by which the United States, the largest capitalist power of them all, protects not only all her property, her loot amassed in its various shapes over the years, but her position in international politics, her prestige, her status-if you like, her image.

In other words a great web myths and realities interwoven that the Americans themselves are hard put make clear what it is they would like everyone to see them to be doing.

What they are doing, of course, is making certain that if the United States senses threats and receives them from other quarters of the globe then those in power are equipped to retaliate with the last possible means-the possibility of unleashing world destruction. It's a very simple matter in the ultimate sense. And no amount of propaganda can obscure it.

Alistair Cooke is an adroit old liberal and has long been a significant ambassador for the US in his broadcasts and journalism over the years.

With immense affability and charm he conducted this programme as if he were running a dinner party. The smiling the need to stem piracy on the high seas at a time when the US didn't want to be interrupted the business of raping nearby landscapes, exploiting and building colonies in central and south America, pushing trade ever upward.

Mr Cooke revealed all this in his friendliest manner. He did everything possible to detract from the vicious content of what we were really seeing-he even made the Nuclear War Museum into a fun place for the children and with a broad sweep of his pen across the face of American history did his best to establish the best of all liberal stands — a "rational' goodhumoured view of it all tinged with a little moral concern.

With attractive filming and a reassuring compilation of international history of this kind, we are clearly intended to feel that despite the horrors which exist all's well and everyone is in control of affairs.

That this last is patently obvious to who understands the tum of today's crisis.

But liberal propagandists like Cooke are dangerous. They gloss over, in all sorts of subtle ways, the real stuff of American capitalism, the major threat it represents at all times.

History is made into a game, an entertainment for a true is anyone momen-