Trafalgar Day is ruled out: May Day replacement will have no name

THE PUBLIC holiday to replace May Day is unlikely to have an official title, despite pressure for it to be named Trafalgar Day.

Next year will see the last May Day bank holiday and Gillian Shephard, the Secretary of State for Employment, said yesterday that the date of its replacement would be announced 'quite soon'.

She said a 'tremendous number' of suggestions for titles had been received, but added: 'We don't normally give public holidays names.'

She told BBC 1's Breakfast With Frost that the day could be named 'October bank holiday'.

May Day could be replaced by a holiday on the third Monday of October - close to the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, when Nelson defeated Napoleon's fleet.

Fears have been expressed in Whitehall that the name Trafalgar Day might upset Britain's EC partners, particularly the French.

Sir Rhodes Boyson, a former education minister and Conservative MP for Brent North, said: 'The holiday should be identified with something in British history we can actually shout about. We had maypoles on May Day, let's have some flags out on Trafalgar Day.'

The idea of 'October bank holiday' was 'neutral and dull', he said.

The May Day bank holiday was established by Labour in the 1970s. Its abolition caused morris dancers - for whom May Day is an important festival - to descend on the Houses of Parliament last month in protest.