Breton Revolutionary Army (BRA)
Armee Republicaine Bretonne (ARB)
Armee Revolutionnaire Bretonne [ARB]
EMGANN [Combat]
Front de la Liberation de la Bretagne [FLB]
The two dozen members of the Breton Revolutionary Army (BRA - about 107,000 results), also called EMGANN [Combat - Left Movement Indépendantiste Bretonne, about 76,400 results], or Armee Republicaine Bretonne (ARB - about 20,900 results), Armee Revolutionnaire Bretonne [ARB - about 1,740 results ], Front de la Liberation de la Bretagne [FLB - about 10 results] or the Breton Revolutionary Alliance (ARB, not well attested), operated in Bretagne, the north-western French province, since the early 1970s. The descendants of the Celts, who once came from the British Isles, do not identify themselves fully with the French, or consider themselves special among other French citizens. During censuses, many of them call themselves Bretons although put French as their native tongue.
The ARB carried out a nuisance campaign in 1989, targeting French public buildings in Brittany. French authorities arrested a half dozen members, and by year end the group appeared inactive, if only temporarily. The BRA was responsible for an explosion in 2000 at a McDonald's in Brittany which resulted in one death.
Breton separatism is at a very low level and the militants are "amateurs." More worrying, is the reappearance of anti-capitalist militants. The BRA (apparently named by analogy with the Irish Republican Army - IRA) belongs to the extremist wing of the nationalist movement Emgann, which is fighting against the "French oppressors." Some, such as the group that bombed the McDonald's, combine anticapitalist ideology with separatist goals.
The goal of these anti-capitalist, anti-establishment militants was to reapply and reinvigorate the 1960s mantra of similar groups such as Action Directe and the Red Brigades: action (by the government) - provocation (by the terrorist groups) - repression (by the government, which would theoretically lead to a revolution). In the last few years there has been an increase in propaganda and fund-raising by these new groups, especially derivatives of the Italian Red Brigades that lived in the Italian/French border region, Spanish anticapitalists who lived in the French Basque region and a few Breton separatists / anticapitalists who lived in Brittany.
The Emgann manifesto states that "... our combat is firstly that of our Breton compatriots which fight in their companies for their employment and justice social, which mobilize for development economic of our country with service of all and in respect of our inheritance natural, which fights for the defense of our language and our culture, which militate with the daily newspaper for the right to live decently on their premises, in Brittany. We always indicated our adversaries: the French State centralizer and denier of the People and the capitalist system with its misadventures productivist néo-liberals. That known as without putting our " Gwenn ha du " in our pocket we were not those which claimed that it is enough to change flag so that the men and the women of Brittany are finally free in the individual and collective plan. And if it is true that we line up in the independence camp, we never located the political debate in Brittany on that only ground."
The Breton Resistance Army (ARB) claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in April 2000 that damaged a McDonald's restaurant at Pornic, but the group denied involvement in another attack the same month against a McDonald's restaurant near Dinan that killed a French employee. French police arrested four members of the Breton nationalist group Emgann (Combat) on charges of involvement in the Dinan bombing.
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