Bretons fight against ‘progress'

Press, 10 April 1980, Page 7

Bretons fight against ‘progress'

By

Robin Smyth,

of the Observer

Foreign News Service The famous rose-granite rocks of Plumanach on the Brittany coast are now as black as pitch, smothered with oil from the Tanio. the Madagascan tanker which broke in two in an English Channel gale on March 7. The oil was swept into the almost-landlocked bay by the highest tide of the year, and the Plumanach is now sealed off by a police cordon, like a port visited by a plague ship. The shops are closed, the hotels are shuttered, and many of the inhabitants have temporarily moved out. The narrow streets are filled with army lorries, tanker trucks, and fire engines. On the shore, platoons of soldiers in yellow oilskins are peeling off the black sand with shovels and washing the rocks with hot-water sprays. To judge by the main beach at Perros-Guirec, the next resort along the coast, where few signs of pollution remain, the Plumanach will soon be restored to its former pink splendour. However, the mood of the people in the contaminated areas of Brittany's holiday coast is still one of numbed despair. This is the third black tid from wrecked tankers to hit the rose-granite

coast since the Torrey Canyon in 1967. Only two years had passed since the Amco Cadiz disaster, and tourism had only just begun to pick up again. It may be weeks before the army decontaminators reach the least accessible rocks and coves along the jagged shoreline. ,

People wonder if the interest of the authorities, who were slow in putting the emergency rescue plan into operation, will last that long. Above all, they know that a fourth black tide is inevitable. The forward part of the Tanio lies sunk with 11,000 tonnes of oil still in its tanks. Some 3000 tonnes has escaped so far, and another 13,000 tonnes is safelv in Le Havre in the salvaged stern. The oil is too thick to be pumped up from the bows by conventional methods. Can a new way be devised before the rivets give way as they did when the 22-year-old Tanio split and sank? “We want it now if it is coming — we cannot go through all this again.” says a local fisherman. “I support the demand of our mayor for the wreck to be dynamited straight away.” A great anger with the modern world is burning Brittany at the moment, and the black tide is only part of it. The people of Pointe du Raz, to the south, are pre-

paring for the next bout in their struggle against the decision to site one of Europe's largest nuclear power stations at Plogoff, on rhe coast.

Unlike the northerners, who have been drained of initiative by the incessant oil slicks and now refuse to take a hand in the cleansing operations, the people of Plogoff have been able to feel that they could force the Government to retreat.

Led by their mayors, demonstrators have harassed hundreds of gendarmes called in to protect an official information drive about the area’s nuclear future. The demonstrators had decided that the consultation was foregone conclusion; and they besieged the police cordons round the trailers from which the consultation was conducted for the whole of its six weeks course. Bretons have always complained of neglect by Paris because they are so far from the centre of things. But in the past they at least enjoyed the advantages of being left on the sidelines by the march of progress — unspoiled country and unpolluted shores. Now they find themselves in the worst comer of Europe for marine pollution. Scores of oil-tank-ers, some reported to be no more than floating wrecks, navigate the trea-

cherous double sea-lane round Brittany every day. The Plogoff nuclear station compounds the feeling of Bretons that they are martyrs to other people’s energy needs. The Breton nationalist movement, which had lost direction and coherence in recent months, is taking new heart.

The Plogoff demonstrations place the Government in an uncomfortable position. The French nuclear electricity programme has been moving ahead swiftly, encountering remarkably little opposition until now. Already nuclear reactors are producing 19 per cent of French electricity, which places the country ahead of the other main industrial nations. This proportion will be increased to 50 per cent by 1985. Nuclear power has the backing of the Communists as well as the majority parties. It seems to have been over-confidence that led the Electricite de France company to select a reactor site on a stormtossed promontory which has a significant place in Breton legends about the sea.

To give way now will be seen as an admission of the effectiveness of anti-nuclear rioting, making it all the harder to force through the choice of another site. Yet President discard has said very plainly that no area will

be compelled to have anuclear installation it doesnot want.

Plogoff is in no mood to change its mind. The mayor (Mr Jean-Marie Kerloch) said; “The Government must realise that the people of Plogoff and, those who support them, are prepared for even harder batties if necessary.” — O.F.N.S. Copyright.