Alan Heusaff

Under the Traité d'Union de la Bretagne à la France, 18 September 1532, the Breton Parliament remained in being until the French National Assembly, following the French Revolution, arbitrarily abolished it in 1790.

This caused a complicated situation in Brittany as many Bretons had spearheaded the Revolution as a means of overthrowing the centralist politics of the French monarchy.(5)

Like many other Breton nationalists, he was greatly influenced by the Irish example of the 1916 Easter Rising.

From the experience of their fellow Celts of Ireland during World War I, many young Bretons came to believe that if war were to break out again, then France's difficulty would be Brittany's opportunity.

Alan Heusaff, also Alan Heussaff (23 July 1921 in Saint-Yvi, Finistère – 3 November 1999 in Galway) was a Breton nationalist, linguist, dictionary compiler, prolific journalist and lifetime campaigner for solidarity between the Celtic peoples.

Heusaff was born in 1921 in Sant Ivi, near Rosporden, now in Kernev (Cornouaille, Department of Finistère).

His family originated in nearby Toulgoat and his parents, Sébastien and Mari Heusaff, were native Breton speakers.

Heusaff spoke only Breton at the time he was sent to school.(1) When Heusaff was growing up it was estimated there were well over a million native speakers of this Celtic language.

In 1925 the French Minister of Education, Anatole de Monzie, made clear the Government policy: "For the linguistic unity of France, Breton must be exterminated".

Now banned by law was the teaching of language, literature, history, folklore and anything interpreted as "nationalist".

(2)

Arriving in a French-speaking school in these circumstances profoundly affected the boy.

His community's language was openly vilified and children were punished if caught speaking it.

Nevertheless, Heusaff had a good ear for languages and eventually joined the École Normale in Kemper (Quimper, Finistère) where he trained as a primary-school teacher.

He continued to be acutely aware of the state's policy on Breton.

Most native speakers, under these conditions, were made illiterate in their own language by the state.

Yet Breton was an old literary language with the first manuscripts in it surviving from a century earlier than such manuscripts in French.(3)

To teach himself literacy in Breton, Heusaff sent for a correspondence course from Skol-Ober founded in 1932 by Marc'harid Gourlaouen (1902–1987).

As it was not politic to do so openly, he found help from a native speaker who offered the use of his address as a post-restante to receive the lessons.

In 1938, as a teenager, Heusaff joined the Parti National Breton (PNB) which sought to re-assert Breton independence.

The crowns of Brittany and France had become unified by the marriage of Anne of Brittany to Charles VIII of France, as a condition following the defeat of the Breton armies at the Battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier in 1488.

Following the death of Charles VIII in 1498, Anne was forced to marry his cousin, Louis XII of France, to ensure the French crown's continued control of Brittany.

In 1940, German forces overwhelmed France and Marshal of France Philippe Pétain signed an Armistice.

The establishment in July of Marshal Pétain's French collaborationist government in Vichy, however, still gave it legal authority not only in the "unoccupied south" but also in northern and western France occupied by the German Wehrmacht.

Many Breton militants soon realised that Germany was of little support.

A native Breton speaker, he trained as a primary school teacher but in his early twenties joined the separatist Bezen Perrot militia (1943–44), for which he was sentenced to death in absentia at a court martial by the post-World War II French government, but eventually amnestied in 1967.

After studying mathematics and physics at the University of Marburg, Germany, he arrived in Ireland in 1950.

He continued his studies at University College, Galway, and, on graduation, joined the Irish Meteorological Service, becoming a naturalised Irish citizen in 1955.

An aviation meteorologist, he devoted his spare time and retirement to peaceful activism, promoting the languages, culture and autonomy of the Celtic countries.

A co-founder of the Celtic League in 1961, he was its first general secretary until 1984.

Heusaff stated in 1970: "From 1938 onwards I shared the conviction that Brittany could never regain her freedom "by consent"; the French state would use all its strength to prevent that ever happening. I agreed that we should seek external support, wherever it came from, because we were too weak to attain our aims alone. Why should we not do what all free countries do when their freedom is threatened; seek alliances? By doing so we were affirming that we were already free".(6)

Heusaff joined the PNB's uniformed but unarmed Bagadoù Stourm and then gravitated to the Kadervenn group of PNB, which believed in direct action.

He became convinced that only separation from France would save both the language and the cultural identity, which he believed was dependent on its survival.

Among the honours he received for his work was the 1986 Gradam an Phiarsaigh (annual Pearse award) presented by the President of Ireland, Patrick Hillery.

In the same year, at the Welsh Eisteddfod, he was elected as a Bard of the Welsh Gorsedd.

He was fluent in all the six modern Celtic languages as well as English, French and German.

Heusaff died on 3 November 1999, at his home near An Spidéal in Connemara, Galway.

In an interview in 2005 with the historian Daniel Leach, his widow, Bríd Heusaff commented on the effect of his school experience on his life: "I'm fairly certain that if Breton had been taught at school when Alan went there... and if there had been some respect for it, that he would never have become involved in the Breton movement at all. Because his main interest, really, was the language".

(4)

He married Bríd Ní Dhochartaigh in 1953 (died 2 February 2008); the couple had six children, four girls and two boys.