IN the midst of the ongoing debate over the use of the word National in the name of the SNP, which centres on that word’s links to right wing causes, there is an example near to us of a “nationalist” movement which, in the past, has been both left and right in its declared views.

Brittany in north-west France is one of the six nations in the Celtic League – the others are Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Isle of Man and Cornwall – that began in Wales in 1961 and is still extant.

Most Scots are probably unaware that our fellow Celts in Brittany remained an independent nation – first a kingdom then a duchy – until the 16th century when King Francis I of France, the father-in-law of Mary, Queen of Scots, made Brittany officially a part of France in 1532, albeit with a great degree of self-government.

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The French Revolution changed all that, with the Breton parliament dissolved and the language banned. For the next century and a half, the Breton people agitated quietly to have their ancient name and privileges restored, but it wasn’t until after World War II, during which some Breton nationalists collaborated with the Nazis while others joined the Resistance and the Free French forces, that Breton nationalism became a genuine political force.

It was an armed force, too, with two groups carrying out bombings until a young woman bystander was killed, after which the movement became peaceful and has remained so since the millennium.

It was always a cultural force – the Bretons are proud of their traditions and language, but they are also happy to be French, and realistically independence is not on the cards. Great autonomy is, and is being sought along with protection for the Breton language and culture.

What is also very much an issue is the anger that many, if not most, Bretons felt when the French Government tried to make the name of Brittany disappear off the map. Along with Turkey, France is the only country in the Council of Europe not to have signed the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, The idea was to create a new formal “Grand Ouest” area merging Brittany with the Pays de la Loire. All that did was remind Bretons that their richest of five departements, Loire Atlantique, had been taken away by the wartime Vichy Government and made into a separate departement.

Breton nationalists have agitated for the return of Loire-Atlantique to Brittany, with 30,000 people marching through Nantes in 2014 to call for this – their leaders cited the Scottish referendum as their inspiration.

Now the main Breton nationalist party, the left-wing Unvaniezh Demokratel Breizh (Breton Democratic Union or UDB) has seats in councils and the regional government, but the French Government refuses to recognise Breton nationalism as it does with all such movements – egalite means that all French citizens can only be French alone.

The UDB sees the reform of left-wing opposition to President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist En Marche party as key to the future of Brittany.

The party recently stated: “In the longer term, it seems that the left is to be rebuilt in Brittany as elsewhere. For the UDB, this work will have to be done on new bases.

“The idea of equality, which sometimes confuses theoretical equality with real equality, will no longer be able to ignore the diversity of territories and cultures.

“Regional and local self-government, within the framework of a federal republic … could be a remedy for the crisis of representative democracy.”

Will Macron listen, or will he, like almost every French President in this, the Fifth Republic, ignore Breton and nationalisms in France?