In May 1967, an apolitical organisation known as Emgleo Breiz gathers 150,000 signatures supporting the teaching of the Breton language. Its leader, a teacher named Keravel, is committed to pursuing the work of Ar Falz and Yann Sohier.
One thus gradually witnesses the re-emergence of Breton literature (Xavier Grall, Alain Guel, Youen Olier); Breton theatre (Tanguy Malmanche, Jakez Riou, and Paol Keineg, who authored Printemps des bonnets rouges628 ); Breton cinema (Britta-films and René Vautier, the creator of Avoir vingt ans dans les Aurès629 and La folle de Toujouane630 ); and Breton publishers (Kelenn, Presses universitaires de Bretagne). In Quimper, the Nature et Bretagne631 publishing house is born of the efforts of an economic interest group formed by seven Breton writers.
Simultaneously, thanks to the articles and books written by journalists and authors such as Jean Bothorel (La Bretagne contre Paris.632 Table Ronde, 1969); Yann Poilvet (Armor); Morvan Lebesque (Comment peut-on être Breton?633 Seuil, 1970), a former member of the Breiz Atao and the first editor-in-chief of L’Heure Bretonne, who went on to become a columnist at Canard enchaîné;634 Yann Fouéré (L’Europe aux cent drapeaux.635 Presses d’Europe, 1968); Renan Caerléon; Hervé Le Boterf; Yann Poupinot; and others, the French — or Parisian — public opinion is gradually becoming better informed about Breton issues.
Since the end of the 1960s, Breton culture has thus reclaimed its legitimate place both in Brittany and Paris.
The Breton flag, which had, until 1950, been considered seditious, is now accepted everywhere. The ‘Bzh’ abbreviation of Breizh (‘Brittany’), which was officially banned on 7th August, 1967, is sprouting up in increasing numbers on the rears of cars. And since 1966, Breton parents have been free to call their child Gwenola or Goulven, just as they were once allowed to choose Glacette or Clémenceau.
Breton song (An Alarc’h, Pontcallek) now enjoys newfound radiance thanks to Glenmor in particular, but also Alan Stivell, Gilles Servat, Gweltaz, the Tri Yann an Naoned (‘The Three Yanns of Nantes’), Youenn Gwernig, Gwalarn, Kerrien, Diaouled ar Menez, and others.
Despite beginning his career in the Bleimor Scouts (whose leader, P. Géraud-Keraod, has since created the Scouts of Europe), Alain Stivell (Cochevelou) periodically declares himself to be a ‘communist’ (September 1975). In 1970, he was awarded first prize in the folk song category at the Pan Celtic Festival of Killarney.
Gilles Servat (L’hirondelle,636 Les Bretons typiques,637 Koc’h ki gwenn ha koc’h ki du), who rages against ‘Breton leukaemia’ and considers himself to be Left-oriented, declares that ‘under current circumstances, singing in Breton is revolutionary’ (Armor-Magazine, March 1974). In his song entitled White Ermine, however, what leftists Daniel Chatelain and Pierre Tafani perceive is an ‘involuntary synthesis of the national and patriarchal worldview of the reactionary bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century’ (Qu’est-ce qui fait courir les autonomistes? Stock, 1976).
In the French capital, which was already home to a Breton mission and numerous associations, the newspaper entitled La Bretagne à Paris638 became a weekly publication. The Ker-Vreiz cultural centre, headed by Mr Simon-Pierre Delorme, celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in May 1968. As for the Elysées-Bretagne centre, which opened in 1967, it received around 4,000 visitors a day until it burnt down.
From the MOB to the UDB
Political action resumed more discreetly with the 1947 release of Le peuple Breton,639 a federalist European newspaper established by former Resistance member Joseph Martray. This attempt was, however, not followed up on (during that same year, two clandestine issues of Breiz Atao written in Ireland were circulated in the Netherlands).
The month of July 1950 saw the birth of the Comité d’études et de liaison des intérêts Bretons640 (CELIB), also headed by Mr Martray. Mr René Pléven acted as its long-time chairman before being replaced by Mr Lombard, the senator-mayor of Brest. It was a sort of officious regional council whose ambition was to compensate for the state’s shortcomings. Although it would be targeted with reproach for being ‘reformistic’, it did play a significant role in the 1950s.
In 1955, Yann Poupinot, the former secretary of the Ker-Vreiz, joins forces with Yann Fouéré, who had returned from Ireland specially for the occasion; together, they found the Movement for the Organisation of Brittany (MOB), the first genuine Breton party of the post-war period.
No sooner had it been created than the MOB demanded autonomy for the financial management of a Breton regional assembly elected through universal suffrage, while also proposing a redefinition of the ‘Breton nation’ within a federalist European framework and protesting against the inclusion of the Nantes region in an alleged ‘central-western region’. Last but not least, it rejected traditional distinctions and adopted the Breiz Atao slogan Na ruz na gwenn (‘Neither red, nor white’). Right-wing populism, its adversaries would claim.
Around a hundred municipal advisors accepted this programme, including some who were once part of the PNB. Mr Olier Mordrel writes:
Without the MOB, the Breton scene would have been a huge void, one that the CELIB was not meant to fill. Whereas the latter established economic recovery programmes, the MOB vulgarised them and strived to encourage the public opinion to grant them the necessary support. Brittany thus reclaimed a political consciousness of its own.
The MOB made a political breakthrough around 1960–62, but was soon weakened by an internal crisis. During the Brest congress held at the end of 1963, a faction of the movement led by Le Prohon and Vieillard adopted a more radically Leftist position under the impact of the Algerian events. The faction, whose ranks included a majority of UNEF641 students from Rennes, chose to embrace secession and create the Democratic Breton Union (UDB).
The UDB still exists today and publishes the Pobl Vreiz and Peuple breton newspapers. It has also sponsored the Progressive Youths of Brittany (Yaouankizou Penn-a-raog Breiz), which have since drifted towards the Left.
An extreme-left organisation that practices ‘democratic centralism’ with a sectarianism that is every bit as pronounced as that of the French Communist Party, the UDB likens the Breton issue to class relations. It thus rejects any sort of alliance with Rightist Bretons, just as the Bleun-Brug did with leftist Bretons at the start of the 20th century when attempting to tie the Emsav to clericalism. It alleges that ‘what is Breton expresses an ethical system and civilisation that are actually those of the proletariat’. It also proclaims:
If it were but a matter of replacing the French Right with a Breton one, we would see no point in our struggle. (Le Peuple breton, November 1976)
In 1970, the release of Morvan Lebesque’s book entitled Comment peut-on être Breton, which was praised in Parisian cenacles, seemed to set the seal on the alliance between the French Left and the Breton movement.
Mr Mordrel remarks:
Our Breton publications followed suit, just like Panurge’s sheep, without realising that by offering their adherence to the party of French Leftist intellectuals, they identified with a generation that no longer had any belief or home base, a generation of uprooted cosmopolitans that had nothing in common with that of young Bretons, who are all strong in their blood and filled with their region’s vigour.
The UDB also attempted to exploit social conflicts — Michelin in Vannes, CSF in Brest, the Breton Foundry Society in Lorient, and especially the Joint français642 strike, which began in March 1972 in Saint-Brieuc.
This tactic did not meet everyone’s approval. Olier Mordrel writes:
The Breton employers who struggle against external competition from a position of inferiority and all too often succumb to the situation, declaring their own bankruptcy, must be defended by the Emsav not only because they provide Bretons with work and allow them to avoid emigration, but also because they embody the indispensable economic frameworks of tomorrow’s autonomous Brittany. […] Class struggle is not the battle for national liberation. Even if we had been unaware of this at some point, the French Resistanc
e, which our communists are so keen on, would have taught us the lesson. For within the Resistance, all classes fraternised in order to drive out the occupier. What was advised back then is still advised now.
The UDB only comprised 190 adherents in 1969, compared to fifty-eight in 1965. With great difficulty, this number reached 215 in 1971 (figures provided by J.C. Lecorre and Nicolas in L’Union démocratique bretonne. Contribution à l’étude de l’Emsav.643 DES de sciences politiques, UER de sciences juridiques de Haute-Bretagne, 1973). Today, its members are fewer than 500, mostly consisting of students regionalised particularly in the Finistère and Ille-et-Vilaine departments.
During the events of May 1968, the UDB aligned itself with the positions of the French Communist Party, which led it to experience its own leftist scission.
In February 1970, the leftists led by Guiomar and Le Guyader, who had almost overrun the movement’s leadership during the Guidel congress of November 1969, were indeed purged; and not in a very democratic manner either. In the journal entitled La Taupe bretonne644 , they would denounce the ‘nationalist hijacking of class struggle’ and state that ‘the UDB is a tiny Breton bureaucracy whose ideology is national-reformistic’ (La Taupe Bretonne, issue number 1). In 1972, Guiomar would release Les Bretons et le socialisme645 through Maspéro.
During that same period, one actually witnessed a proliferation of Leftist groups: the Breton Communist Party (PCB), Sav Breizh, Stourm Breizh, etc.
Born in 1971, the Breton Communist Party (PCB) publishes the Bretagne révolutionnaire646 newspaper. It is headed by Y. M. Gefflot and the Count of Gouyon-Matignon. The Sav Breizh (‘Breton Resistance’) journal aimed to ‘open a new revolutionary path for the Breton struggle, one that takes the 1968 mutation into account’. However, it vanished after several years of efforts to define a doctrine that never ceased to be vague. Stourm Brezh (‘Breton Struggle’) was an ‘autonomist revolutionary’ organisation whose alleged inspiration stemmed from the Ukrainian and Catalan anarchist experiences. It was led by a former paratrooper of the Eighth Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment of Carcassonne who had embraced Leftism under Occitan influence.
The ultra-Left was also represented by APL-Nantes (which had ties to Libération magazine), the pro-Chinese Rennes-révolutionnaire,647 Politique-Bretagne648 (a local emanation of Politique-Hebdo649 ), Test (connected to Tempêtes,650 the successor of L’Idiot international651 ), (Trotskyist) Bretagne rouge,652 and so on.
Political Meanderings
On its part, the MOB pursued its activities until around 1969, when it entered a more or less slumbering state; meanwhile, its leaders continued to express themselves through Yann Fouéré’s newspaper entitled L’Avenir de la Bretagne.653
On 2nd February, 1969, while in Quimper, General de Gaulle announces his intention to hold a referendum on regional reform. He declares:
Every region whose existence is justified by both its size and its value must have the will and be given the necessary means to play its rightful role within the entirety of our national effort.
This declaration kindles great hopes. From his Argentine exile, Olier Mordrel adopts a ‘favourable’ position. A few months later, however, de Gaulle exits the political scene.
In 1972, a French industrial, Mr Jean Le Calvez, launches the Strollad ar Vro (the ‘Land’s Party’ or SAV). With seemingly quite significant financial means at its disposal, the latter comes across as the MOB’s successor in the eyes of the public opinion. In fact, it proceeds to elaborate its own doctrine on the basis of the Breiz Atao, and Mr Le Calvez buys out L’Avenir de la Bretagne, where Mr Yann Fouéré continues working as a columnist.
No sooner had it been created than the SAV came up against the hostile attitude of Ms Anne-Marie Kerhuel, the former head of the Informational Committee on Breton Emigration. In the Douar Breiz (‘Soil of Brittany’) bulletin, which acts as the organ of the ‘Adsav 1532’,654 she accused it of being an ‘emanation of the authorities’.
This accusation would be adopted by Patrice Chairoff (Ivan D. Calzi), who claims, in his Dossier B… comme barbouzes655 (Alain Moreau, 1975), that Mr Le Calvez, a former employee of the Francexpa Society (whose director is Mr Gilbert Beaujolin, a founding member of the 1958 Left-Wing Gaullist Movement), has been continuously paid out of the funds of various trade companies that served as a ‘façade’ for parallel policing activities whose implementation depended on Mr Beaujolin and Colonel Barberot. These ‘revelations’ would cause quite a stir in the Emsav.
The SAV’s first congress is held in Saint-Servan on 27th May, 1973. The participants decide to campaign in the legislative elections, as Le Calvez declares:
Tomorrow, we shall be the elected representatives of the Breton people.
The results, however, are beyond mediocre. With twenty-seven candidates, the SAV only gathers a total of 30,166 votes. The UDB, with merely five candidates, obtains 6,062.
In the aftermath of this electoral setback, the SAV initiates a sudden shift towards the Left. In 1974, the editorial staff of L’Avenir de la Bretagne undergoes complete transformation. Having become a supporter of a ‘pro-self-governance Breton Left’, journalist Lucien Raoul, known as Fanch Tremel, replaces Jean-Pierre Le Méleder in the role of secretary general. Siding with Lenin and Bakunin,656 he launches a full-scale attack against the Breton Right, apparently in the hope of obtaining a place within Leftist milieus. With an amused look in their eyes, UDB members scornfully reject him.
During the presidential elections of 1974, the SAV chooses to support Mr François Mitterrand, who represents the French Left, against Mr Guy Héraud, the federalist and regionalist candidate.
In the spring of 1975, during the congress of Guerlédan, the party’s Left-wing rids itself of Mr Le Calvez, who vanishes as quickly as he had once appeared. Mr Yann Fouéré dissociates himself from this new orientation. L’Avenir de la Bretagne ceases to be published, as Mr Raoul-Tremel’s decides to express himself solely through a confidential newsletter entitled Combat Breton,657 published in Paris and specialising in the peddling of gossip. The SAV thus finds itself completely eliminated.
Since then, the last fragments of SAV number 2 have merged into the Socialist Front for the Autonomy and Self-Governance of Brittany (FASAB), a conglomerate where the survivors of Sav Breizh and Stourm Breizh rub shoulders with the representatives of the Breton Action Committees (CAB), born of the transformation of bodies that had previously supported the detainees of the Breton Liberation Front. It is there that one encounters Mr Alain Guillerm, who co-authored Clefs pour l’autogestion658 (Seghers, 1975) together with Mr Yvon Bourdet. The FASAB participates above all in the organisation of Festou-noz (popular music evenings). Its spokesman is Doctor Guy Caro, a psychiatrist who formerly acted as the general counsellor of the Côtes-du-Nord department and the head of the PSU’s ‘national minorities’ commission.
At present, the Emsav’s Right wing is only represented by La Nation bretonne659 and the team behind the Young Bretons’ Movement.
Autonomism Versus Separatism
Having adopted the title of an ephemeral publication created by singer Glenmor and writers Xavier Grall (Keltia Blues) and Alain Guel (L’homme de pierre660 ), La Nation Bretonne, run by Mr Hervé Glot, mainly publishes theoretical studies that are rather reminiscent of Stur’s first version.
Jeune Bretagne,661 which replaced the Bretagne-Action662 newspaper in 1971 (a newspaper whose initials coincide with those of Breiz Atao), had had close ties to the SAV during the period that preceded its transformation. In agreement with Yann Fouéré, its leaders had undertaken to give L’Avenir de la Bretagne a new lease of life. Shortly afterwards, the Brest section that opposed the SAV’s electioneering policies chose to secede. Mr Eric Le Naour (Georges Abhervé-Guéguen) was among those who decided to leave. He would then write a book about the Breton language under the pseudonym of Jorg Gwegen. Since 1975–76, Jeune Bretagne has regained momentum, publishing a newspaper entitled Breizh Yaouank, whose subheading is: ‘For B
rittany, for Europe’.
Just like La Nation Bretonne, Jeune Bretagne rejects the separatist temptation, while simultaneously dismissing simple decentralisation:
The independentist dream is a dangerous one. On the eve of the establishment of a peoples’ Europe, Breton separatism would leave an infected wound upon our continent’s side. Autonomy lies in the domain of more readily accessible matters, where the price to pay is not as great. (Breizh Yaouank, October–November 1976)
Jeune Bretagne also criticises insurrectional or terrorist action, stating that the ‘archetypal example’ of Northern Ireland ‘is not to be followed’.
It is nonetheless a fact that clandestine struggle has found some new partisans. From 1966 to 1976, a total of more than sixty bomb attacks signaled the rebirth of Breton activism. The first one was carried out on 18th October, 1966 against a tax office in Saint-Brieuc. Next came the destruction of a CRS barracks garage in April 1968, and then, in 1974, that of a television relay station located on Roc’h Tredudon.
Clandestine Struggle and The Four Versions of the FLB
Initially, the Breton Liberation Front (FLB), which declared itself ‘nationalistic and independentist above all else’, claimed responsibility for these acts. This ‘first’ FLB was organised into Kevrenns (regional sections), bagadou663 and strolladou.664 It also had connections to the Committee of Free Brittany (CBL), headed in Ireland by Mr Yann Goulet.
In 1969, the police, acting upon information received from a trustworthy source, conduct an entire wave of arrests. About fifty people suspected of belonging to the FLB find themselves behind bars, including three members of the clergy, journalist Jean Bothorel of Bretagne-Magazine, and two members of the UDB (who are immediately excluded from the latter). In both Brittany and Paris, committees are established, offering their support to the detainees. The latter, however, would be amnestied following the election of Mr Georges Pompidou.
Controversies and Viewpoints Page 26
