Elections to the Wigan Borough Council were held on Thursday, 3 May 1990, with one third of the seats up for election with an additional vacancy in Bryn. Previous to the election there had also been a by-election in Abram, which the Labour Party successfully defended. Despite a wider array of parties - mainly a product from the fractious SLD merger - contesting the election, in several ways it beat

1986 The year 1986 was designated as the International Year of Peace by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** Aruba gains increased autonomy from the Netherlands by separating from the Netherlands Antilles. **Spain and Portugal ente ...

's lows in participation. A record of six seats went uncontested as one quarter of the council's wards held no elections, with the Conservatives contesting one half of the wards (an all-time low) and the SLD one quarter (the lowest since

1979 Events January * January 1 ** United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim heralds the start of the ''International Year of the Child''. Many musicians donate to the ''Music for UNICEF Concert'' fund, among them ABBA, who write the song ...

). The

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repeated their last year's total of four candidates, but with only two in the same wards as previous. Elsewhere,

Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

John Vickers fought his first of many elections in Hindley Green and the respective Social Democrat and

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sides opposed to Alliance merging into the SLD fielded a sole candidate each - the latter of which having previously came within a

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of winning Langtree for the SLD. The night seen numerous surprising gains, with Labour gaining another seat in the SLD bastion of Langtree, and for the first time, in the Conservative's bastion of Swinley, whilst the SLD managed its own breakthrough in the Labour territory of Hope Carr. With dwindling hopes of ever regaining

Orrell Orrell may refer to: *Orrell, Greater Manchester, a district of the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan **Orrell (ward), an electoral ward of the Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council *Orrell, Merseyside, an urban area east of Bootle, in the Metropolitan Bo ...

, Swinley had become the Conservative's bulwark in recent years, and the Labour gain here raised the prospects of Conservative representation being removed altogether from the council. The loss of Hope Carr denied Labour a clean-sweep, but they managed an all-time high of winning all-but-one of the wards, and bettering their last year's record in voter share. Overall turnout in those wards contesting rose to a local elections high (with the 1979 election omitted for coinciding with the

general election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

) of 39.4%.

Election result

This result had the following consequences for the total number of seats on the Council after the elections:

Ward results

References

{{Wigan Council elections 1990 English local elections

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...

1990s in Greater Manchester