In one part of the discourse of the extreme right today, the word "identity" is used to replace the word "race", a sign of soft-core racism. So, in order to see if the Bretons' interest in their identity could result in part from racism, I went back over all the interviews I had carried out, and picked out all mentions of the words "race", "racism" or "roots". (The word "roots" can indeed hide and expression of racism : a person "with roots" distinguishes him or herself from someone who is "rootless" or stateless...) Sad to relate, I did indeed find traces of racism in the interviews :

72 % of the people questioned never mentioned the words "race", "racism" or "roots";
in 6.5 % of the interviews the word "race" can be seen used in an innocuous way - i.e. it replaces the word "origins", which can be taken as a misuse ;
the theme of roots appears in 8.7 % of the interviews : the word "stateless" is used as the opposite of "having roots";
finally, 17.4 % of those questioned displayed flagrant anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner racism.

     These figures (which have no statistical value, being based on such a small sample) may appear high, but they are in fact much lower than the French national average.

     It is not, however, the figures themselves that are interesting : it is important to know who is using racist arguments. Is there a link between the appeal of Breton identity and racism ? I constructed an "index of apparent Breton-ness" based on numerous indicators of attitude (pride of being Breton, etc.) and of behaviour (cultural habits, etc.). Then I sought to find if there was a link between this index and the tendency to voice racist opinions. The conclusion is that there is no such link in the interviews I held. There is no statistical link, but there is the beginning of a correspondence in those people who are the most vigorously nationalist. However, where there is direct correlation with racism, it comes not from the Breton profile, but rather from the sociological profile : the older the person, the greater the tendency towards racism ; the more right-wing in voting habits, the greater the tendency towards racism, etc. Here there is a statistical correlation, backed up by polls carried out about racism.

Breton identity and the French State

     What is the relationship between Bretons and the state ? I attempted to find out from two angles. In the first instance I did this by studying what the people I met said about the autonomists, who are the opponents of the French State. Here, the word "autonomist" may be seen rather to have negative connotations for the Breton population, since :
8.7 % of those I met did not understand the term "autonomist"; either they missed the point of the question, or apologised for not knowing what the word meant
10.9 % said they were relatively well-disposed to the autonomists
28.3 % feared that the autonomists were extremists
39.1 % regarded them as violent and rejected violence themselves
58.7 % were afraid that autonomy would lead to isolation.

     This shows that the autonomists' message has not got through to the Breton population, which is exactly what the singer Glenmor said to me when he granted me an interview. According to him, "the Breton militants would do better to go and see the people instead of getting together in their cliques of twenty or thirty" - they lack communication.

     But, given that the people I met find the autonomists "hard to swallow", what do they themselves say about France ? This is the second angle I tried in order to gauge the relations of Bretons to the French state. I searched for all mentions of the words "France" and "French" in the interviews, and came up with a very different result from the one we have just seen. Leaving out any irrelevant occurrences, where France is mentioned without being directly identified with the speaker's views and without any connection with Brittany (21.2 %), we are left with five categories of remark :
the most frequent (38 % of occurrences) is particularist in character. It consists of saying that "Brittany is a region apart in France". It may be France, but at the same time it is special.
The second most frequent comment (31.4 %) is the French standpoint. The person questioned puts Brittany as part of the French "whole", and argues as a French person.
Then follow the (two) categories I have labelled separatist (26 % of occurrences). A small proportion told me : "I've got a Breton passport", or "I'm more Breton than French" or "I don't feel French". But more importantly, 36 % of the interviewees involuntarily slipped out expressions which placed Brittany outside France. Had that happened only once or twice, it would not have meant much, but when it involves more than one-third of the sample, its significance would seem that much greater, all the more so since such slips are often repeated. For example : "We in the Gallo (1) region are already that bit closer to France... oh sorry, I'm making you ill... I mean, smile." One gets the impression that there is an opinion trying to get out, but that the speaker won't allow himself to express it.
The last category is that of redundancy. It is found in 4.6 % of the extracts, and consists of saying : "Brittany is finished, France is finished, what counts now is Europe", or even : "Europe is finished, what counts now is the world".

     I tried to see if the Bretons accepted that there was a possibility of non-Bretons managing to become integrated into "Breton-ness", and found in their remarks a lively fondness for what one of the interviewees expressed as the "right of the heart". In other words it is seen as possible that anyone may become Breton who loves Brittany, her countryside, her people or her culture. One can then become Breton as long as one loves, which implies, of course, a great effort to be like other Bretons.

     Otherwise, it seemed to me through studying the interviews, that there was a strong social bond in Brittany. This is something which can be seen, a contrario, in the analysis of the National Front vote, which is generally accepted to correspond to situations of social despair. The National Front vote in Brittany is decidedly lower than the French average. It can therefore be assumed that there is relatively less social unease in Brittany than elsewhere in France.

     Moreover, in their interviews, the people questioned often affirm their contentment. They do, it is true, express some anxiety, a discomfort linked to unemployment, etc., but when they speak about the fact of living in Brittany, they say : "Oh, we're fine in Brittany, I wouldn't like to live anywhere else". I tried therefore to see what could give rise to a certain soundness of the social bond, and it seemed to me that, paradoxically, amongst the most important elements were rurality and the presence of the bocage (2). Thebocage has long been considered as an isolating factor, and though it is true that it does cut people off from one another geographically and physically, it also forces a society to group its members and to reinforce the bonds between them. So the social practices of meeting and communication have tended to strengthen over recent years, with the increase in geographic mobility : at the same time in higher density areas, where people are used to living on top of each other and where social codes aimed to isolate individuals so as to allow them some privacy in their lives, mobility has contributed to an increase in isolation between people. This is a proposition I have borrowed from Hervé Le Bras.

     The persistence of certain values also seems to play a positive role in the social bond. These are traditional values like work, willingness, family, ambition, fidelity, justice and honesty. They help create social cohesion and seem to be linked to Christianity. So it seems to me that the reminiscences of Christianity still present in Breton society play a role favouring social cohesion. Brittany appears to be lagging behind other parts of Europe as they pass from a "Catholic confessional model" to a "secular humanist model". What will happen, though, when she catches up with those other regions the most dechristianized. Are Breton culture and identity indissolubly linked to these traces of Catholicism ? Will it all crumble as a result, or will the Catholic religion be replaced by some other ideology ? Might it even be possible for a Breton regionalism, autonomism or nationalism to fill the role of social cement that has so far been played by the Catholic religion ?

(1) Gallo is a dialect of French spoken in the area just to the East of the linguistic frontier (Upper Brittany).

(2) The bocage here refers to a land management system, where fields and meadows are enclosed by hedge-topped banks, and people live in scattered farms and hamlets.