Local government
Although Glasgow Corporation had been a pioneer in the municipal socialist movement from the late-nineteenth century, since the Representation of the People Act 1918, Glasgow increasingly supported left-wing ideas and politics at a national level. The city council was controlled by the Labour Party for over thirty years, since the decline of the Progressives. Since 2007, when local government elections in Scotland began to use the single transferable vote rather than the first-past-the-post system, the dominance of the Labour Party within the city started to decline. As a result of the 2017 UK local elections, the SNP was able to form a minority administration ending Labour’s thirty-seven years of uninterrupted control.

Glasgow Origins and development
The area around Glasgow has hosted communities for millennia, with the River Clyde providing a natural location for fishing. The Romans later built outposts in the area and, to keep Roman Britannia separate from the Celtic and Pictish Caledonia, constructed the Antonine Wall, remains of which can still be seen in Glasgow today.

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland, and third-largest in the United Kingdom. Historically part of Lanarkshire, the city is now located within the boundaries of Glasgow City Council – one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It is situated on the River Clyde in the country’s West Central Lowlands. Inhabitants of the city are referred to as “Glaswegians” or “Weegies”.

Glasgow grew from a small rural settlement on the River Clyde to become the largest seaport in Britain. Expanding from the medieval bishopric and royal burgh, and the later establishment of the University of Glasgow in the fifteenth century, it became a major centre of the Scottish Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. From the eighteenth century onwards, the city also grew as one of Great Britain’s main hubs of transatlantic trade with North America and the West Indies.