Greater London Council election, 1970

← 1967

9 April 1970

1973 →

100 councillors
51 seats needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party

Party	Conservative	Labour	Liberal
Seats won	65	35	0
Seat change	17	17
Popular vote	971,227	766,271	103,837
Percentage	50.6%	39.9%	5.4%
Swing	2.1%	5.9%	3.4%

Results by borough.

Council control before election

Conservative Party (UK)

Council control after election

Conservative Party (UK)

The third election to the Greater London Council was held on 9 April 1970 and saw a Conservative victory with a reduced majority.

New constituencies to be used for elections to Parliament and also for elections the GLC had not yet been settled, so the London boroughs were used as electoral areas. Westminster was joined with the City of London for this purpose. Each 'winner takes all' electoral area returned between 2 and 4 councillors.

In addition to the 100 councillors, there were sixteen Aldermen who divided 11 Conservative and 5 Labour, so that the Conservatives actually had 76 seats to 40 for Labour following the election. The poll in Hammersmith was delayed to 27 April due to the death of one of the Labour candidates. The original result for Harrow turned out to have an enormous mistake and a recount was ordered on 20 April which did not alter the result in terms of those elected but did identify more than 25,000 votes which had been incorrectly recorded.

With an electorate of 5,524,384, there was a turnout of 35.2%. Labour recovered from its mauling three years previously, but did so primarily in working-class areas. Consequently, relatively few seats changed hands: Labour won back Camden, Greenwich, Hammersmith, Lewisham, Wandsworth, and one seat in Lambeth. The results did enable Labour to take back control of the Inner London Education Authority and were one of the factors used by Prime Minister Harold Wilson in deciding to call a general election soon after.

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