Local government
Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-lo ...
elections
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...
were held in the thirty-two
London boroughs
The London boroughs are the 32 local authority districts that together with the City of London make up the administrative area of Greater London; each is governed by a London borough council. The present London boroughs were all created at t ...
on Thursday 9 May 1968. Polling stations were open between 8am and 9pm.
All seats were up for election. The result was a landslide for the
Conservative Party, who won twenty-eight of the boroughs, while Labour lost control of seventeen of the twenty boroughs it had held going into the elections (including
Bexley, where it did not win a single seat). Only ten
Liberal councillors were elected in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
.
The result followed the Conservative gain of the
Greater London Council
The Greater London Council (GLC) was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council (LCC) which had covered a much smaller area. The GLC was dissolved in 198 ...
in the
elections the previous year.
Aldermanic elections
Until
1978, each council had
aldermen
An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members th ...
, in the ratio of one aldermen to six councillors. Following the elections, each council elected half of its aldermen, who served until
1974
Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of President of the United States, United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom K ...
. The remaining aldermen had been elected in
1964
Events January
* January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved.
* January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarc ...
and would serve until
1971 *
The year 1971 had three partial solar eclipses (Solar eclipse of February 25, 1971, February 25, Solar eclipse of July 22, 1971, July 22 and Solar eclipse of August 20, 1971, August 20) and two total lunar eclipses (February 1971 lunar eclip ...
. This only affected political control in
Newham, which remained Labour-held after the election of aldermen.
Results summary
*Turnout: 1,876,698 voters cast ballots, a turnout of 35.8%.
Council results
Summary of council election results:
Overall councillor numbers
References
Greater London Assembly – London Borough Council Elections 2006*
{{United Kingdom elections
London local elections
1968
The year was highlighted by Protests of 1968, protests and other unrests that occurred worldwide.
Events January–February
* January 5 – "Prague Spring": Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Czechos ...