1960, Bretagne en révolte : 20 ans de luttes contre l’État français – Documentaire Histoire – MG

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00:00 – Une Bretagne marginalisée : le début de la colère (1960-1965)
05:00 – Révolte paysanne : la Bretagne rurale entre en lutte
10:00 – Naissance du militantisme breton moderne
15:00 – Le FLB choisit la clandestinité et l’action directe
20:00 – Répression d’État : arrestations et procès politiques
26:00 – Amnistie et espoirs politiques (1969-1974)
31:00 – Les années 70 : divisions internes et violence diffuse
36:00 – Att€nt@ts symboliques et bascule tragique
42:00 – Reconnaissance culturelle et fin d’un cycle
47:00 – De la révolte à la mémoire (1981-2003)

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Qui était le Général Pascal Paoli, Père de la Nation Corse ? https://youtu.be/fZvuMZIwEJs
Bretagne 1940 : Quand l’indépendance bretonne flirtait avec le nazisme https://youtu.be/wZLXe_KChEk

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Une colère bretonne 1961 – 1981
Réalisé par Reynold ISMARD
Tous Droits Réservés

#NotreHistoire #Bretagne #DocumentaireHistoire #FLB #IdentitéBretonne #HistoireContemporaine #France #RévolteBretonne #Glenmor #BZH #Autonomie #LuttePaysanne #MémoireCollective

In the mid-1960s, Bretons took direct action
against the French state. What are the origins and causes
of this fever sung by Glenmore, the bard of this angry Brittany from which
the youth must emigrate to find a future? Brittany is in a state
close to underdevelopment. We must remember what the situation was like
in our region at that time. It was in the rankings
of almost every category in second-to-last position,
just before Corsica. The major industrial takeoff
did not happen in Brittany. Therefore, the workforce
is forced to cut. whether it was for rural equipment,
electrification, water inductions,
or above all for the image it gave to the outside world. Brittany was considered
a backward region. She had missed it, not, as is
often said, because of the state. She had missed it because the Bretons
had lacked imagination and audacity. If there were a Breton plan,
there would necessarily be institutions to manage it. You can imagine that as soon as there is
a plan, the State starts to worry. Joseph Martray created in Quimper in 1950,
the Committee for the Study and Liaison of Breton Interests,
with the support of the former President of the Council, René Pleuven. It brings together local elected officials, senators, members of parliament,
business leaders and economists to work
on the development of Brittany. Celipus’s true merit, if it has
one, is that it awakened the Bretons. They were told: It all depends on you. It doesn’t depend on the state. Of course, we need to push
the state when it doesn’t help us. And above all, we need to
establish institutions that allow Brittany to express itself. Traditional Breton agriculture,
abundant and self-sufficient, struggles to integrate into French capitalism. With anger at its core and under the leadership
of its leaders, such as Alexis Gourvenec, it is organizing itself. In Léon, Breton farmers,
wanting to control the market, created the SICA of Saint-Paul. With a Rwessé,
you can clearly see the beauty that is like you and that is like you to have hashums in your roulette, to say sub-prefect. With my wives, in the sub-prefecture,
perhaps the truth, and my life, I love that one. And when you unravel it,
you understand a doubt again, and understand a who, what. My God, what a mess in the sub-prefecture,
the aspect has been added. And then, it gives a serious denau. I see a draspunt, that’s all.
There was a feeding frenzy again. There was a sub-prefect.
To other fangs, to Pesaounais. To a terracotta cake. Pommingade, Matheo was very happy. You saw that you see,
and your office to your sub-prefect, and that I am going to see the
sub-prefect’s office and that I am going to threaten her and towards the radio, when we were at Avarece, the peasants were in the Saint-Mère
and the sub-prefecture is Montrouless. You have an arena. That’s already the usumentin. There was barely one Montroulaise. And what was called the capture
of the sub-prefecture of Morlaix, which was not a capture
of the sub-prefecture of Morlaix. No more than my battle in Iran,
it was not one. It was simply Alexis Gourvenec
forcing his way in. Alexis Gourvenec and Marcel Léon were
arrested and then tried in Morlaix on June 22, 1961. Very great humility of an aillou a
and my hole helped him to leave me. It kills. What he said, there was reason to dodge it in
Urze, and there is an urgency in Urze, in Vaud. Even at Dichet d’Allez,
there is a dry finish line. And afterwards, there is a little
grace to an archer, a great one. A tall man from the rear,
arrested in Dichet de Galette, as they say in Dutre, arrested at Dichet. I went to Dinhô
to fall one day, but… In 62, it will be the battle of the rail,
a fight against unfair rail transport pricing
which penalizes landlocked Brittany. Since the advent of a fifth
Republic which turns its back on the parliamentary system, the single person,
unable to make themselves heard by the voice of their elected representatives alone, is
now calling for union action. In the second phase of celibacy,
our action became more intense. And that is where we decided,
with the agricultural unions, but also with all the
workers’ unions that joined us, we decided
to stop the trains in Brittany if the government did not give in
on this problem. So this operation lasted three days
and the government gave in. I won’t say any more,
but this is to tell you that the method was no longer the same
as the parliamentary method. Since the end of the war, a
victim of a shameful regime of choice made during the occupation, all
Breton activism has a whiff of sulfur. In 1957, Yann Foueray attempted to revive
Breton political action by creating the Movement for the Organization
of Brittany. I am part of a Breton movement
called the MOB, which means the Movement
for the Organization of Brittany and which, precisely, is a movement that is in
favor of a certain Breton federalism, which would give the peasants and everything
that is Breton a certain administrative autonomy, I understand that well,
and it is not a separatism as many people fear. The MOB was indisputably, we
must be honest enough to recognize it,
a reappearance of the old Breton movement, if only the
emblematic personality of Fouet is there to show it. The novelty was people like me,
that is to say a whole generation of people who joined the Breton cause for
generally quite diverse reasons. The major French political issue
at the time was the Algerian War, which really occupied everything
and particularly concerned young people, because there was
the question of going to serve in Algeria. We realized
that some of our elders were in contact, but in very
specific contact with extremist elements who then gave
support to the Algerian groups for the colonel, etc. At the beginning of 1964, the younger members therefore left
the MOB and created democratic bretonne. We were genuinely
committed to left-wing values. The IDB activists
were activists who fought for labor disputes. For us, class struggle was
something that was completely accepted. Emzao is the name of this movement
with very diverse aspects which brings together those who affirm the identity
and aspirations of the Breton people. I discovered the immense value of
my life until then, which had consisted of forever telling us
about the culture that lived, that existed, but that no one talked about. That’s how it started, basically. Back then, taking out a Guenadu meant
getting your face smashed in at a protest. This was also the time when the BZH,
the BZH sticker, came out, which was banned by Marcelin. To make matters worse,
he also banned European cooking methods at the same time. We go to bed or we use
another form of action to say: But yes, yes, yes, we exist. In Brittany, there are Bretons,
there is a Breton culture. There are things that are worth what they are
worth, but they belong to us, we defend them. The contempt that the French state had shown
since Louis Philippe and Jules Ferry towards Algeria,
Tunisia, Morocco, let’s be clear, it’s the same thing in Indochina,
was of the same nature as that which it showed towards Brittany. First,
I was active in cultural organizations, so it was very pleasant, the Celtic circle, all that stuff,
but I thought that at some point, it was quite possible to
make things move forward. I didn’t claim to be making them move forward
myself, but in the end, I would have considered it a disgrace
not to go further. When someone spits in your face,
you don’t exist, I think, well, I thought anyway,
you’re keen to say: Yes, yes, I exist. I am here. I use the means I have,
because I have no others. To be Breton was
already to be blindestin. In short. On March 11, 1966, Molotov cocktails
were thrown at the sub-prefecture of Saint-Nazaire. In the following months, the
focus shifted to the perceptions of Saint-Brieuc, and then of the Orient. In 1967, the Divard brothers
and René Vaillant named their clandestine movement, FLB, Armée
républicaine bretonne. From his exile in Dublin, Yann Goulet,
a troublesome member of the Breton National Party during the occupation,
proclaims himself spokesperson for the FLB. The goal of the Breton Republican Army
and the Irish Republican Army is essentially the same. Neither side intends
to annihilate the occupying forces. But through a guerrilla campaign,
through a campaign of destruction, the FLB, ARB, just like the IERA,
intend to force the governments in Paris,
as well as the government in London, not only to take good note of our
demands, but to provide them with a favorable solution. The FLB therefore wants to alert the media
and public opinion to the problems in Brittany. He will therefore target symbolic buildings,
monuments and institutions of the French state, while seeking
never to take the life of another. We handled a little bit of plastic. We were shown how to mount
a detonator on a slow-burning fuse, what the detonating cord is for,
the plastic itself, how it is done. We did it, we went out into the bush
to make a real explosion for nothing, not just for training. We were given weapons. With the Mission to Hide Them,
I can tell you that… In particular, there was a
Mozart rifle, it wasn’t easy. Not easy because it’s big,
heavy and bulky. I can talk about CRS-13,
I really suffered before, during and after. Before, we, I say we,
made three visits to the premises. The attack had been postponed twice. Twice because he was linked
to peasant protests. I reacted as something that was going to
bother us a lot, and it did bother us, because it meant that we had
n’t completely prevented the violence. We have always
been against violence. I would even say that celibacy was
set up to avoid violence. We have mounted some
tough actions, perhaps, but of a union type. At the time, our reaction
was to say: This kind of action risks
jeopardizing part of what we had done, that is, to dissociate
the Breton idea from violence, the far right, fascism, etc. But in ’68, like the rest of France,
Brittany was in the streets. On May 8, 25,000 people
demonstrated in Brest, 20,000 in Quimper. On May 30, 1968, Georges Pompidou received the cedible in the midst of the May 68 crisis. He stayed with us for two hours,
discussing the Breton plan and what should be agreed upon,
what he could agree upon, what he could not agree upon. In fact, we got the essentials,
the road plan, the port of Rousskoff, what have you. Well, we won this through
the violence of others, if I may say so. There is a specific and constant motivation,
if you will, which is the general motivation of Breton activists, namely, somewhere a reaction to this permanent institutional obstacle
they face, which is the principle of non-recognition
of their collective identity. It is quite characteristic and interesting
to see that it is not linked to a specific social universe or milieu , but that somewhere, the
Breton consciousness that animated these people was general and that it touches the whole
population in Brittany, all Bretons. We were all, in short,
the young former students. We were all somewhat marked by
a desire to take on society. The questioning was fundamental
and everything that had this air of activism, of clandestinity,
was very strong within us. Our goal was purely to demoralize
the political class and the powers that be. That was the goal.
That was it. That’s where it actually ended. That is to say, we
wanted to bear witness because Brittany did not have telephone service,
Brittany did not have a motorway. Given my stances
in Bretagne magazine, I was contacted by
FLB activists and I was in the expansion phase, as I was telling you. And I admit that I
committed myself without… I thought about it, of course,
but I committed myself like that, without even suspecting that I could be
manipulated, which would have been possible, in a pinch. I found myself in Paris with two
other comrades to whom I was introduced in a somewhat secretive manner. There was still an element
of secrecy in all of this. And with these two comrades, we created what we called a FLB commando. Between September and December 1968, we
did indeed commit a few attacks. And those attacks only affected us at the level of
electricity pylons and then a water pipeline in Loufiane. Before quoting these verses in Breton by his
great-uncle, a poet, de Gaulle presents the Breton with a draft
referendum on regionalization. De Gaulle will fail and leave power. From 1966 to 1968,
36 attacks were carried out, striking the gendarmerie, bulldozers, tax offices,
town hall, public works companies, prefecture and sub-prefecture. Given what we can call a certain
success of the FLB’s actions, we asked ourselves the question of its
recruitment, saying: What if the FLB recruited from within the ranks of the UDB itself? I received a phone call,
I who was a member of the steering committee, from another member of the steering committee
who was Yantchen Veillard. I was him, he was from Rennes. And Weillard calls me and says: We
have two comrades who have just been arrested by the police,
who have just been arrested. They were members of the FLB. And I remember very well
that Weillard said: They must be excluded. I said: Yes. I say: Yes, I say yes,
they must be excluded. And he added: You write the press release. At the time, let’s not forget,
these were times when we had internal circles such as the Bonnets,
later the Marcellins, people who did not hesitate to ban
organizations without any qualms. Who led the FLB?
We knew nothing about it. It was we who estimated,
based on the information gathered on the ground, that there were
two or three of them leading the FLB. So, these three were identified
and they were the ones under surveillance. The police tried,
as expected, to make people believe that there was a deus ex
machina pulling the strings behind it. That’s completely false. Of the structured and organized activists,
there were perhaps fifteen or twenty of them, all broken. The person who introduced us
to this barracks was actually linked to the police services and we
were arrested without any problem, by the way. When we were arrested, we found ourselves, I don’t know, about sixty of us, let’s say, at CRS 9 in Rennes. That is to say, we went through that. At the time, I would like to remind you that
police custody was limited to 10 days in matters of state security. And as a policeman told me:
Kid, you’re in for 10 days? I said: Yes, 10 days is a long time. He said to me: And 10 nights? That’s quite a lot, isn’t it? We’ve always considered
it to be more or less a matter of common law. We were forced to house them and
feed them. Some were always afraid
that their food would be drugged; they didn’t want to eat. When you are stopped,
the time until you have nothing left. They block your accounts,
they take everything from you, you can no longer write a check, it’s commonplace. And we don’t know that.
We discovered this in two hours. Marcelin was Minister of the Interior. And since I had been to his office,
he brought me up to his study. And that’s when he greeted me
by saying: You little prick. He addressed me informally; he had
a very friendly relationship with me. And He showed me the article
of the Penal Code that concerned us. Attempting to steal weapons from
a barracks was punishable by death. I fell because the policeman
showed me papers signed by someone I knew,
which stated what I had done. Was I too naive? Was the paper true? Was the signature valid?
I don’t know. But anyway,
we saw quite a few people falling around us, almost every
day, back then. It was quite difficult from a nervous standpoint. I was afraid of one thing, and
that was the reaction of public opinion and of my parents as well. I was thinking: When they find out about this,
how will they react? And when I arrived at the health service,
paradox of paradoxes, for the first time in my life,
I was identified as a Breton. To the health of the Bretons,
this, to the Bretons, that. For the first time in my life,
it was in prison that I received a kind of recognition of my existence. That’s quite curious. I know this from Raymond Marcelin,
who told my father at the time: You know, they’re going to suffer. Because de Gaulle is
completely shocked. He believed that it was some hooligans
or troublemakers who were thinking of setting off firecrackers in Brittany. But when he saw that there were
doctors, there were priests, there were workers,
there was a journalist, there was an architect, teachers,
titles from 18 years old up to titles of 45, 50 years old. And it is true that if de Gaulle had not
left power after the referendum of April 1969, it is true that we
would have stayed for two years. The State Security Court was created
in 1963 against OAS activists. In 1969, 50
Breton activists were brought before the court. There were two
really shocking things. The most shocking thing
was seeing armed men, with machine guns, displaying weapons
in a court of law. The State Security Court,
for political prisoners, was still a guarantee
and not a handicap. We had a procedure,
we were in the health sector, we had our own area,
exactly like the OAS guys or the PC guys,
to make them into generals, go home, etc. In 52, 53, as Duclot had been there
like the far right before the war, we had a political status. We went on a long hunger strike. We made several. A first for being grouped together. We were in secrecy at the beginning, do
n’t forget, it wasn’t very fun. We were all alone,
it was cold, it was winter. Nobody was taking
a hard line against us. No newspaper, not even L’Aurore,
which at the time would have been more sensitive to this kind of thing. They did not want a trial,
given the number of people involved, and again, this
extremely interesting graphical aggregate which would still have caused some confusion. When the UDB refuses to recognize
the exceptional courts of the time, it is not alone
in the political landscape. There are other groups,
including Formation française, which at the time rejected
the exceptional courts. This is the position, in particular, of the left
in general and the far left. We collected hundreds at the beginning,
then thousands of signatures on a text which was,
precisely, a text which condemned the exceptional courts, which did not approve of
the FLB, which even disapproved of it. I seem to recall that the text
initially disapproved of the use of violence. But without justifying it, or
at least explaining it. The new President of the Republic,
Georges Pompidou, grants amnesty to Breton activists. At the beginning of the chapter, we wanted to
cover in our national life the beginning of a new seven-year period
given to all those who had succumbed
to a passing training, the chance to resume their place
within the community. Georges Pompidou granted amnesty,
but again, the amnesty was requested by all elected officials. There were a whole bunch
of mayors who had signed. There was Poher, who was the candidate
against Pompidou, so election of 69, who also said
that he would ask for our amnesty. So, all of this led Pompidou to
agree to request it as well, and we were granted amnesty, so no trial. Whenever there was a deliberation,
the SNCF, when you think about it, it’s quite comical,
announced the arrival of FLB detainees in the station. Over the microphone, they were saying: There
are three prisoners arriving. And so,
in Saint-Brieuc, in Rennes, in Nantes, everyone was celebrating,
they were applauding them. Clearly,
the support of the Breton people in Brittany for the prisoners was strong. There is no doubt about that. The French joint strike lasts for months
and sparks an unprecedented wave of solidarity. Working class, trade unions,
local elected officials and Breton movements find themselves on the front line. We hear French joint,
FLB, same fight. In this post-1968 FLB,
leftists rub shoulders with early nationalists. If we do a sociology of the activists
of those years and compare it to our own sociology, there is
nothing in common anymore. This is no longer a
homothetic image of Brittany at all. That’s a lot of unemployed people,
a lot of young people who have real problems finding work, who have
real money problems. We saw the FLB initially,
I would say, before 1972, in a purely nationalist discourse. Evolved from 1972 onwards, and in the
following year, towards a discourse that also took into account
the aspirations for social liberation or the
economic situations of Brittany. This will be very clear, moreover,
in the 1972 trial. Later on, we will see the emergence of
ecological concerns, for example. I led the social struggles from
within the trade unions. And then, the fight for Brittany. I was a member of political parties
that existed at the time. I was even a candidate
for this Arrault program in ’73. And we realized
that it led to nothing. There was the FLBA and the
Breton Revolutionary Army, the FLB, ARB, Breton Republican Army. They also came to join
this, a group that called itself Traouard. We needed to try to make it possible for these people to work together. Within this Kuzelber,
there were people who were a little more right-wing, others a little more progressive,
others who spoke more about nationalism, others more
about anti-capitalism. Those were the days, though,
we mustn’t forget that, it was the time when we
were being told about self-management. I was extremely cautious and
personally, I didn’t speak to anyone else. I was a grave for that. Some groups that were being rediscovered
did not have the same technique or had different manufacturing techniques. So, these were opportunities, among other things,
to send someone for explosives training,
explosives training, but safe, so that people do
n’t do just anything. I have made two trips to Ireland, which was
important for me, and some Irish people have made a trip to Brittany. The organization was based on what were
called kèvrens, presumably by Breton country. I think the organization
was not structured from the top down. It was she who was self-structuring. That is to say, the only instruction
I was given by the person who contacted me, the Canadian,
was that there had to be three of us. And that’s all. These were not large
military structures like those found elsewhere.
We were given the explosives. Besides, we didn’t have
much money. We actually paid a membership fee,
if you will, every month. We had a circle of people around us
who were ready to help, even if it was just to find money
to finance what we were doing. We had another circle of people
who were ready to spot targets, to identify places
where we could steal explosives. But generally, these people
never participated in the actions. For a structure like the one we had
in Brest, I would easily reach 25, 30 people. For a while, they had bought
industrial-style timers that cut off time. It was a timer used
in gas stoves, which was more or less reliable
provided it was well assembled, but it’s not exactly
high-tech equipment. Often, these were
electrical detonations with igniters, makeshift timers,
which meant that it would explode, it completely escaped the control
of those who had planted the bomb who, in the meantime, were far
away when it exploded. It’s not meant to kill,
obviously, but we take the risk of killing. At that time in Brittany,
there were groups starting up which, for us, were
completely uncontrollable. And so, we had to try
to find out who it was. Because on the day we take action
in a city, when there are uncontrolled groups,
we can come face to face with someone we don’t know who might do the opposite of what we want to do. There was the FLBL-NAS for a while. They could see that there were guys
operating as lone wolves. A FLBL-NAS guilty of distributing
leftist leaflets at most. His recruitment was done through a
small advertisement placed in the Jeune quotidien Libération. It is in fact a police creation
aimed at trapping FLB activists. The DST kept us informed
of the information they obtained , and we used it
procedurally. There were appointments, there were the
famous “cusumeurs” as they called them. So, we were trying,
without getting bitten as they say, to try and secure the surveillance
as far away from as possible. The DST (Directorate of Territorial Surveillance) certainly had
wiretaps. At the time, telephone tapping was rare
, but the DST had some as part of state security. The question of carrying out attacks against
UDBC militants to cause the Breton movement to tear itself apart
was studied by the police, names were mentioned,
my name was given, the name of the Guégueniat brothers was given
, a police operation was mounted to see about possibly blowing up
our secondary residences. The funny thing is, at
the time we were young and activists and
we didn’t have any second homes. And we could have, at the very least,
had this image that some had, the armed wing, the FLB,
and the political movement, the UDB. Honestly,
it was a scenario that, moreover, the police, first and foremost, were convinced
was how it worked. I must tell the truth that it
doesn’t have the slightest existence. Saint-Malo, April 1972. The villa of Bouygues, the entrepreneur,
is destroyed by an attack. The DST will be implicated. And that has never been proven. There have been administrative investigations
which have cleared the DST of any wrongdoing. But for us, the bather
was presented like this. The next day, they
said: Hey, it’s so-and-so. The DST came to see us saying:
It was so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so, who carried out the attack against the town of Bouy.
No, we tightened them. They had followed the guys. They didn’t know exactly where
the attack was going to take place, but we knew it was in the Saint-Malo area. The deputy to the local head of the DST in Rennes
at the time provided this written testimony. The operation was carried out by the DST,
which is also confirmed by the officials themselves. I became aware of it a few weeks
in advance through two of my subordinates who informed me of the preparations. The affair will cause a great stir. This witness will be removed from the DST
and will end his career as chief commissioner of public security. The Minister of the Interior
made the Council of Ministers aware this morning that a lowland group,
a Corsican group and two Breton groups were
currently carrying out explosive attacks and activities that
undermine the integrity of the territory. It was decided to dissolve them. Barnais goes from Dutre-Vabreau. That same year, presenter Charles
Le Gall resigned from his position. His management had censored him when he
announced a meeting in support of Breton activists. February 14, 1974,
the ORTF relay station, perched on the Monts d’Arrée in Roctrédudon, is blown to bits. One million Bretons are deprived
of television for a month. The FLBRB claims: Television is
the main instrument of cultural subjugation of the French state. And there was a helping hand,
but there was a helping hand that was n’t the best, unlike Brittany. They came, but they
had a case to answer for. They weren’t well. But that’s a bit fast, 12 years, towards Tud,
and a beautiful Tud, can’t we say that you are older than us, Genoa,
and there, it’s a bit tabale, of truth, of old crooked. I don’t know who did that
to Roque-Trédu-Don, in fact, I have no idea. I heard some real
hatred from certain people. We were touching their TV. The attack in Roque-Trédu-Don was
granted amnesty even though it is not known who planted the bomb.
We don’t know. We know more or less, but they have
not been identified with certainty. The first action I was able to take
was against the gendarmerie, a gendarmerie in Brest. It was in ’74. It was the day the
Tour de France started. We had blown up a
police station garage. The next day,
the media talk about the problems that we want to bring to the attention of the general public. There is no justice in Vannes,
a lady had to have a leg amputated, I… So there, they were not making any demands. When there are injuries,
they generally do not make demands. The unfortunate person who passes by gets blown up,
to such an extent that they themselves, while handling their bombs,
have had deaths on two occasions. In Thivougerette, near Château-L’Ain,
on the night of September 29, 1976, a commando of four people intended to
bomb a French Army barracks under construction. Among them was the young Yahn Kehl Kernalegen. He dies in the premature explosion
of the bomb he is in the process of priming. Personally, I did
n’t know Jan Kell. He was a comrade, he was
someone who, moreover, probably had the same… Who had come to this action
for a little bit of the same reasons as me, reasons as much social as
of independence. It’s true that after the death of a
comrade like that, one can be driven to go to extremes. It’s very hard to hold back. Within the groups, there were people
who wanted to go further. Then there are others, no,
they never used them anyway, but there are people who were ready
to go on actions and use weapons. That’s not my case. I have always refused to carry
a weapon because when you carry a weapon,
there is always the risk of using it. The trick we came up with
was a high tide. At times when the sea was very low,
it was possible to return to the Arsenal through a place which is the naval circle. So, we could all enter without going through
any doors, without going through any gates. There were five of us
that day because we dropped off various loads
on buses belonging to the navy. The maritime prefecture’s explanation
was that there was a commando unit—
a unit of, I don’t remember the exact number, six or seven men—
who arrived in diving gear, coming in from the sea. In Pontivy in ’72, and in Guingamp in ’75,
thousands of Bretons mobilized to demand that the State recognize
their culture and language. Brittany now
officially has its cultural charter, recently adopted by the
Regional Council of Brittany. This charter was signed
today by two ministers. There is the political and economic unity
of France which, of course, will be maintained, which is in the interest
of all, including, naturally, the Bretons. But on the other hand,
there are cultural and regional personalities who must be able to assert themselves. And I hope that the charter will contribute
to the expression of Brittany’s cultural identity. June 1978, the escalation continues. A symbol among symbols, Versailles
is in the crosshairs of a commando. Versailles was mentioned. But Versailles was mentioned,
like many other objectives put forward by this or that group. I think,
without wanting to betray the other participants in this meeting,
that Versailles was taken with small smiles. With small smiles because,
personally, I didn’t really see how it could be done. They, apparently, knew. The castle of the Sun King,
which the revolution had protected and which wars had not managed
to reach, the castle which had not known fire or lightning since 1789,
experienced its first attack last night. This attack has disfigured
a particularly prestigious part of the national heritage. It has provoked strong emotions among
art lovers and in the political world, because it is a political group
that is likely behind this attack. The bomb was placed in the south wing of the Palace
of Versailles. The explosion opened a gaping hole
between the ground floor and the first floor, a few minutes after
the security patrol had passed around 2:00 a.m. My feeling is
one of outrage. I find it absolutely astounding
to think that a man or an organization could have allowed itself
such barbarity. You know that last Friday,
she had already arrested two 28-year-old men in Rennes who had
confessed to being the perpetrators of the attack against the Palace of Versailles. The interrogations of Patrick Montosier
and Lionel Chenvières therefore led to the arrest of six other people. All of them were presented this morning
before the State Security Court. Public opinion probably
didn’t understand Versailles. I think the Versailles attack had
a negative effect because it led to
increased repression, whereas the impact in Brittany was not of
great importance, in my opinion. This was the time in Brittany when the MOCO Cadiz was stranded and when there were struggles,
popular struggles in Brittany. When we met in Guarec,
we all said to each other that we had to do something. Today, radioactive tomorrow. After the Moco Cadiz, there was an
astonishing number of police officers on us. After the Moco Cadiz,
in a militant, highly charged Brittany, the Versailles attack triggered
a large- scale crackdown against the FLB ARB. The trial of the 14 Breton separatists
accused of 13 attacks has begun before the State Security Court. They are also accused
of reconstituting dissolved movements, FLB, ARB, that is to say the
Breton Liberation Front, and the Breton Revolutionary Army. You now know,
since we have found further searches and arrests,
radio sets rigged up by our adversaries which
allowed them to follow all the police operations
which were directed against them. In fact, they were listening to our
police broadcasts perfectly and continuously, thus easily thwarting the surveillance
they were subjected to. And obviously, that explains
why we have been very… We have very often been caught off
guard in these operations. The FLB responds to the Breton super-cops. In Breac, the Costa Rican villa
of the director of the SRPJ of Rennes was bombed on March 30, 1979. An exceptional jurisdiction,
the State Security Court became a platform for the Breton movement. And beyond that, the entire
Breton left and its friends will be marching there. I was arrested at a second
or third stage. I had time to see on television
that the network had gone down. At that point, I could leave. One Friday evening,
I was out with a friend and I received a phone call from my wife. I was living in Mélisa at the time. And she called… She called my friend’s house and told me: They’re here. So we hear the prosecution’s case. And then, it’s nine years
of criminal imprisonment. That hurts. You need to make a schedule. To survive in prison, you need that. We must not remain inactive and brood. I learned to type,
I learned to be a little bit Breton. In prison, I read Le Monde every
day, but from beginning to end, which already meant that
the time was well spent. And it allows, I believe, moreover, it
allows one to evolve in one’s convictions, to evolve and then
to see the pros and cons. When you’re leaving for nine years, you
have to get organized. Or else we descend into madness. And afterwards, we are probably beyond
social recovery. When Michel Rocard comes accompanied
by his lawyer to make statements, who makes statements for three
hours at the bar of the State Security Court , despite everything, the fight moves forward. Another trial was where it was pointed out
that there were people who had been ministers behind the scenes and who
came to testify in our favor. We knew very well that they had
Breton intentions. We thought their method was
catastrophic and dangerous for Brittany. But they were still Nourds,
they were Bretons. Almost as quickly as the conviction
came support for the families of the imprisoned activists. As early as March 1969,
the UDB set up, and this is the party treasurer speaking
at the time, financial assistance for the families of our two
incarcerated comrades and, incidentally, for our comrades also in prison. For us, we had duties,
a circle of solidarity towards our former comrades. From 1969 onwards, during the first trials
of Breton activists before the State Security Court,
personalities such as the writer Xavier Graal, the lawyer Yann Shouk,
Gwen Hlaun, and the father-king founded Scolvreys, a Breton relief organization which would
henceforth help activists to imprison their families. Since my family needed
Scolvreys, I committed myself fully to helping Scolvreys
provide for the families of imprisoned Bretons. We don’t have to pass judgment since we
are a humanitarian organization. A revolutionary tax,
I don’t think that exists. At least, I don’t have anyone who has
brought me huge sums of money. The money simply comes from
the Bretons, the Breton women, the people of… How should I put it? I would say from all over the world,
because it comes from all over the world. 1980, Brittany does not give up. She is protesting against the construction
of a nuclear power plant in Plogoth. The socialist left is
on the verge of power. Regionalization, language,
identity and culture. Can the Bretons hope
to finally be heard by the French state? Madam, Miss, Sir, good evening. Therefore, there will be no nuclear power plants
in Plogoff. The Minister of the Sea confirmed it. Mr. Lepinette indeed declared this
morning that during the First Council of Ministers yesterday,
President Mitterrand had indicated on this subject that it was necessary to confirm
what had been I can tell you that the amnesty law
will be very broad and very generous and that necessarily,
it will include provisions which will affect
the prisoners of Brittany and elsewhere, not only those, but all those,
men or women, who are currently being prosecuted or have
already been sentenced by the Court of Security. On July 29, 1981, Robert Badinter,
the new Minister of Justice, passed a law abolishing
the State Security Court. Honestly,
very honestly, I think the FLV’s action , and I mean it, was positive. I say, it was positive,
at least in those early periods, because it forced
public opinion, first and foremost. Then, the Parisian media and, in
a way, government circles began to question
the situation in Brittany, which could have led
people to commit such extreme acts. We thought it would be
met with popular disapproval. This
popular disapproval did not occur. It’s not the FLB
that won the Breton plan, after all. We won the Breton plan,
we won industrial development, we won
the return of Brittany to the modern world. We won it through negotiation
and above all, and most importantly, through the actions of the Bretons themselves
and the initiatives they take. Today’s Brittany,
with its four-way network, has nothing to do with yesterday’s. The Bretons are once again proud
of an identity that was denied for so long. Can we then calmly assess the role
of the actions of the FLB, which took the risk of plunging Brittany into violence? The long staircase in front of
us, we may have helped to get over one or two steps,
starting steps. Certainly. I have no inclination
to use violence. I did it, frankly,
I think, out of a sense of honor. The left-wing parties of ’81 will disappoint
Breton activists. A handful of activists would then return
to violent action during the 80s. This new ARB would only mobilize
very marginal support, especially after the Quai-Vert tragedy, which was never claimed
nor really clarified. It was the death of an innocent woman that brought
an end to the violent action in Brittany. In March 2003, 10,000 people took
to the streets of Rennes to remind everyone that Breton demands were
still relevant.