In the early 1970s the radical Edmund Burke Society (EBS) infiltrated the party electing Paul Fromm as the party's president and other EBSers to the executive. In the 1971 provincial election three of five Social Credit candidates running in the election were avowed "Burkers". By 1972, the party had been taken over by the EBS which now called itself the Western Guard. As a result, the party was put under trusteeship at the instigation of the federal party which declared membership in the Western Guard to be "incompatible" with membership in Social Credit. The federal Social Credit Party disavowed the Social Credit Association of Ontario led by John Ross Taylor of the Western Guard and instead recognized the "Ontario Social Credit League", established in 1973 under the leadership of Bruce Arnold.