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The first election to the Greater London Council (GLC) was held on 9 April 1964.
Background
The election happened at a time of very high political tension, with a general election due in a few months. The GLC did not come into its powers until 1 April 1965, but spent the first year setting up its committee structure and arranging with its predecessor authorities to take over.
Electoral arrangements
New constituencies to be used for elections to Parliament and also for elections to the GLC had not yet been settled, so the London boroughs were used as multi-member 'first past the post' electoral areas. Westminster was joined with the City of London for this purpose. Each electoral area returned between 2 and 4 councillors.
The first election to the Greater London Council took place a month before the first election to the 32 London borough councils on 7 May 1964.
Results
General election of councillors
The Labour Party won a majority of seats at the election.
When the GLC was being planned, it was expected to produce Conservative majorities.[1] However, many suburban Conservative-voting areas had successfully campaigned to be excluded from the Greater London boundaries.[2]
The large constituencies where the winner took all exaggerated Labour's win in votes into a near two-to-one lead in terms of seats. It also made it extremely difficult for the Liberal Party to win any seats.
With an electorate of 5,466,756, there was a turnout of 44.2%.[3][4] Labour did particularly well to win Bexley and Havering, but performed poorly in Enfield which they might have expected to win. In Tower Hamlets, the Communist Party of Great Britain came in as runners-up with 8% of the vote.