THOUGH the passage of time may dull the grief, the anger over the Paddington rail disaster will not diminish - not when it is now disclosed that those who died were effectively killed by corporate greed.

More than that, a price was deliberately put on their lives and those of every rail user by the bosses.

For it is revealed that in the approach to privatisation in 1995, Railtrack decided that adopting the Automatic Train Protection system, which could have prevented this tragedy, would have put up the cost to the company of saving a life from £2 million to £14 million - and that this was too much as it would hit the value of the company when it was floated.

In short, money was put before public safety.

And just how awful and horrible the consequences of that decision was, we now see in the carnage at Paddington - a whole 10 years after the installation of ATP was called for by the inquiry into the Clapham rail disaster and when Britain remains the only country in Europe running trains with virtually no fail-safe system to prevent driver error.

Yet, it is not enough for the government to now strip Railtrack of its responsibility for safety - pointing to the conflict of interest between this task and that of making a profit; a contrast made glaringly stark by the blood on the line at Paddington and the value put on it by the board in 1995.

Neither is it enough for Transport Minister John Prescott to now pledge ATP systems on all high-speed trains.

Nor will any inquiry, inquest, findings relating to driver error, compensation or conscience money assuage the anger over this disaster.

For the fact is that a system that could have prevented it was coldly and calculatingly rejected in favour of fatter profits.

The people responsible for that decision - all of them, including those in government who gave it sanction - should be in the dock facing charges of corporate manslaughter.

For the anger that blazes over this disaster lies in the allegation that it was caused by a crime and not misfortune.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.