ESSAY A Modest Proposal Voice Box, RFH, London

In 1729, Jonathan Swift put forward "A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people from being a burthen to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public". "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London," he wrote, "that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout." He proposed, therefore, to eliminate poverty in Ireland at a stroke by the establishment of a market in child-flesh - this dainty meat to be sold only to landlords, who "as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children".

The journalist Eamon McCann's new "Modest Proposal", delivered on Tuesday evening as part of a season at the South Bank of modern responses to classic essays, couldn't hope to match the shocking effect of the original. What he did do was to show, articulately and forcefully, that Swift's chilly logic can be extended to contemporary circumstances without loss of fitness or rigour.

The actual proposal McCann put forward differed in detail only from Swift's - if you count as a detail his expansion of its application to cover the plight of what's optimistically known as the Developing World; Swift calculated his remedy "for this one individual Kingdom or Ireland, and for no other that ever was, is, or, I think, ever can be upon earth". Bearing in mind that the flesh of starving children may not look an attractive prospect to the fastidious palates of the West, McCann suggested as a refinement that the carcases should be drained, flensed and pulverised, then reconstituted as sausages, hamburger meat, pies, pasties, meat tarts, rissoles, stuffing and the like. He additionally put forward a plausible marketing strategy, based on nostalgia. In this country, we would be tempted with the flesh of children of the former British colonies ("Even tastier the second time around"); France would eat the children of Francophone nations (McCann noted the especially rich yields available in Zaire and Rwanda); America would be happy to continue munching multinationally.

The real difference between Swift and McCann was one of style, of control. The power of Swift's essay lies largely in the air of detachment he maintained, only allowing indignation to leak through. McCann's anger at the system that permits starvation when the world produces abundant food was far more flagrant, the satire only creeping in after he had baldly announced "The truth that dare not speak its name: it is capitalism that generates mass hunger in the world." Baldness may have been a deliberate strategy, a way of circumventing the challenge of matching Swift's satirical ferocity. In any case, the directness of McCann's views didn't detract from the force of his essay, given his eloquence and geniality. He may not be quite in Swift's league, but he has nothing to be modest about.

27 Nov: `The Rights of Man' (0171-960 4242); series ends 11 Dec