1973 Greater London Council election
UK local election
The fourth election to the Greater London Council (GLC) was held on 12 April 1973. Labour won a large majority of 58 seats to 32 for the Conservatives; the Liberals also won their first two seats on the council.
Electoral arrangements
As there had been a boundary commission report with new Parliamentary constituencies which coincided with the border of Greater London, the electoral system was changed (as had always been intended) so that the GLC was elected from single member electoral divisions which were identical with the Parliamentary constituencies.
Councillors were elected for a three-year term. This was extended for an extra year in 1976 when the electoral cycle was switched to four-yearly.
Results
General election of councillors
The Labour Party won a majority of seats at the election.
With an electorate of 5,313,470, there was a turnout of 36.8%.
Among those who were first elected to the GLC in 1973 were Ken Livingstone (Labour, Lambeth, Norwood), later to lead it, Andrew McIntosh (Labour, Haringey, Tottenham) who was his brief moderate rival for the Labour leadership, and Serge Lourie (Labour, Havering, Hornchurch), who became a founder member of the SDP and leader of Richmond upon Thames London Borough Council in 2001.
Aldermanic election
In addition to the 92 elected councillors, there were fifteen aldermen elected by the council. Eight aldermen elected in 1970 continued to serve until 1976 and the eight elected in 1967 retired before the 1973 election.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1973 Greater London Council election” is uK local election. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Greater, London and Council, not as a finished interpretation.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5600611. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1976, 2001 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “1973 Greater London Council election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.