REACTION TO BRITISH INTERNAL COLONIALISM IN TOM PAULIN’S “THE RIOT ACT”

Lasting for more than three decades and causing the death of thousands of Irish people, the Troubles is a notorious historical event that took place in Northern Ireland between 1960s and 1998. Behind the Troubles lie many social and political problems that surrounded the region for almost a millennium. These problems revolved around the conflict between England -and later Britain- and Ireland. However, different from the long lasting Britain and Ireland conflict, the Troubles made Irish people confront themselves and kill each other. The inner-conflict in Northern Ireland depended on the deep-rooted and diversified sociopolitical demarcations that resulted from English involvement in Ireland. The two sides of the conflict were Catholic nationalists and Ulster Protestant unionists. While there are many literary works and films that deal with the Troubles, this article examines the Troubles through Tom Paulin’s play The Riot Act (1985). The play is written as an alternative version of Sophocles’ Antigone, and it offers no dramatic differences from the original text of Antigone. Nonetheless, the cultural, political, and historical contexts behind The Riot Act suggest that it is a political allegory that deal with the problems in Northern Ireland and the issue of Irishness. Yet, the political undertone of Paulin’s work hardly received the scholarly attention that is necessary to provide a new outlook towards the Troubles. Therefore, this paper argues that The Riot Act is a political allegory that satirises British internal colonialism and its policy of divide and rule, which initiated alienation, grudge, and animosity among Irish people and caused instability in Northern Ireland. To support its claim, this study grounds its theoretical foundation on Michael Hechter’s theory of internal colonialism and Jurgen Osterhammel’s theoretical overview of colonialism.