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Welsh devolution gives French conservatives ‘cold sweats’

13 Feb 2023 5 minute read
Photo by Charos Pix is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Luke James

Devolution was always meant to be a process not an event, but its development in Wales has been enough to give French conservatives “cold sweats”, according to a new book.

In his polemical essay, “La France en Miettes” (France in Pieces), academic Benjamin Morel warns growing regionalism in Brittany, the Basque Country, Corsica and Alsace risks the break-up of France within 50 years, despite it remaining the most centralised state in Europe.

Wales, along with Scotland, Catalonia and Flanders, is cited as a cautionary tale in a call on his compatriots to “take seriously what is destroying our neighbours and risks eating away at us.”

“A look elsewhere should give us cold sweats,” writes Morel. “In Wales, autonomism grew substantially between 1997 and 2001 due to devolution. The percentage of Welsh people believing that Cardiff should make its own laws went from 19.6% in 1997 to 38.3% in 2001.”

The 1997 referendum was organised “as a result of noise made the ethnoregionalists”, he adds.

And, citing Boris Johnson’s characterisation of devolution as a “disaster”, Morel concludes: “That we commit the same errors as others, but twenty to thirty years later…when we know how that ends, is simply idiotic.”

Celtic allure

As well as warning against following in Wales’ footsteps at a political level, Morell argues France’s minorities have imported cultural references from Wales, Ireland and Scotland to “give a more Celtic allure” and create what he calls a “Disneyland” identity.

The book, which has received significant coverage in the conservative media in France since its publication earlier this month, comes amid a debate about whether the French government should grant autonomy to Corsica and whether the number of regions should be cut.

An expert in French politics told Nation.Cymru its arguments are part of “an old tradition of French public law which can only conceptualise a particular version of the state.”

“From this perspective, the modern nation-state is built on overcoming ‘archaic’ regional differences and promoting the general interest,” explained professor Alistair Cole of the Hong Kong Baptist University, whose publications include a book on devolution in Wales and Brittany.

“What is shocking is not so much the diagnosis that multiple regional traditions exist in France, but the presupposition that this is negative and that their institutional expression should be strictly controlled.”

The title of the book is a nod to a 1976 work by journalist Jean-Pierre Richardot, which warned conversely that France would disintegrate within a generation without substantial devolution.

Culture war

But its subheading, ‘Régionalismes, l’autre séparatisme’, is more significant. That is designed to bring national and linguistic minorities into the country’s culture war over ‘seperatism’, according to professor Cole.

He said: “More worrying, in this book, is the linkage of this with the debate on ‘separatism’, by which Morel and others mean the threat to universal republican values from minority Muslim communities. Everything gets mixed up: dress codes, regional manifestations, languages.”

The author revives traditional attacks. The Breton anthem, which is sung to the same tune as Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau and has similar lyrics, was the creation of Nazi collaborator and antisemite, François Jaffrenou, according to Morel.

That is contested. The Le Télégramme newspaper reported in 2010 that Jaffrenou was an “imposter” and credited the anthem to a Welsh missionary in Brittany, William Jenkyn Jones. A new version of the anthem was adopted as the official anthem of the Breton region in 2021.

More original were his claim that Chinese investment in the port of Brest is part of strategy to break-up of France stretching back to Soviet Union funding for nationalists in the 1920s, and a comparison between Breton leaders and authoritarian Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for pursuing traditional architecture.

Cartoonish

“It’s incredible to hear in 2023 such cartoonish and outdated remarks from a university professor,” said Breton President, Loïg Chesnais-Girard, in a statement issued this week.

“As President of the Breton region who presented a version of the Breton anthem, created by the national orchestra of Brittany and made available to organisers of cultural and sporting events, I’m now almost descended from anti-Semites. I’m flabbergasted.”

He argued that it was France’s centralised system that responsible for dividing the country, saying of the Gilets Jaunes protests: “When promises aren’t made a reality on the ground, when decisions appear further and further from reality, then yes, we have more and more difficulties to believe in the democratic organisation of the country.

“Instead of constantly looking for scapegoats and playing on fears, it’s time to have a real debate about the institutions we need for the thirty years to come.”

Brittany is currently one of 12 regions, which don’t have any law-making or tax-raising powers but have responsibility over areas like transport and economic development.

The number of regions could be reduced as part of a major government reorganisation being planned by President Macron, it was reported this week.

The most radical option could see regions abolished entirely.

“While this is unlikely,” said professor Cole, “it illustrates the tendency of Paris-based academic and political elites to consider regional expressions of identity as being against the modern State.”


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Cawr
Cawr
1 year ago

France needs to rehink everything if they want to avoid a 6th republic. Even their ‘ethnonationalists’ can’t stop the collapse of their own state. Either de-centralise the French Republic or see a rump being established in its place.

Even better, re-establish the 4th Republic. Better to to back to a parliamentary republic than play around with a semi-presidential one. Thanks for nothing de Gaulle (apart from liberation).

Richard
Richard
1 year ago

I wonder what his view is on devolution in Canada ? Mon General DeGalle perhaps expressed it …Quebec Libre !!

Wrexhamian
Wrexhamian
1 year ago
Reply to  Richard

I once saw a French Govt. Minister being interviewed in Canada on the subject of independence for Quebec. He was in favour, arguing that a region with a separate culture and language had a right to independence. The interviewer then asked him if he agreed that such a right should be extended to Brittany. His fluster and squirming and inability to answer summed up French Govt. hypocrisy on this issue. The French Govt. is currently breaking EU law on national minorities by refusing to give barely any support or succour, or even recognition, to the Breton language or indeed to… Read more »

Riki
Riki
1 year ago

But they are not “Disneyland” identities, are they? The Cultures of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Basque, and the Catalans are all far older than French or English. They were set for hundreds if not thousand of years prior to their coming around. Something these bigger cultures want forgotten!

Cawr
Cawr
1 year ago
Reply to  Riki

Spot on

David Charles pearn
David Charles pearn
1 year ago
Reply to  Riki

Well said 👏

Marvailher
Marvailher
1 year ago

Imagine downplaying breton and corsican nationalism by calling them “regionalisms”.

Lib Dem YesCymru Infiltrator
Lib Dem YesCymru Infiltrator
1 year ago

Welsh Devolution strengthens the British State with greater participation in democracy. Without it, the Brexit divides would be worse. Maybe France has more riots as its people feel voiceless?

Richard
Richard
1 year ago

Gosh ! Didnt know there were many pro self determination Liberals left – or perhaps centre.

With only 4 or 5 per cent ( on a good poll day ) you have a job ahead my friend.

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