Breton Regionalist Union

It expressed the ideology of mainly middle-class and aristocratic groups to secure continuity in local administration and Breton culture.

Sympathisers, if not supporters, included the politician Albert de Mun, the poet and art critic Jean Le Fustec, the linguist and grammarian François Vallée, the composer Louis Bourgault-Ducoudray, the singer Théodore Botrel, the scholar Rene de Kerviler, the composer Guy Ropartz and many others.

The prominent position held by the nobility and the clergy quickly alienated some of the more radical members and led to the foundation of the alternative Association des bleus de Bretagne (Blues of Brittany) in 1899, which had a more liberal-progressive agenda.

Jean-Marie Déguignet, in his Memoirs of a Breton Peasant, wrote that the group was dominated by 'nobles and clerics' who wanted no input from the lower classes about their own culture.

In 1912, Maurice Duhamel left the URB with Emile Masson, Camille Le Mercier d'Erm, François Vallée and Loeiz Herrieu to create the Breton Regionalist Federation.

Le Mercier d'Erm and Masson went on to found the Breton Nationalist Party Yann Fouéré was its vice-president from 1939 to 1945.