The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was founded in Calgary on 1 August 1932 but organised in fits and starts in Alberta due to lack of support from the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA, which was the governing party in Alberta), and from the Labour Party, which had both sitting MPs and MLAs at the time. While most UFA Members of Parliament, led by William Irvine, supported the CCF and ran for re-election (unsuccessfully) in the 1935 federal election as CCF candidates, the bulk of UFA leaders and members were ambivalent to the new party. The CCF did not run candidates under its name in the 1935 provincial election because of its ties with the UFA and the Labour Party. The UFA lost all its seats in the election and fell into disarray. Federally, eight of the UFA Members of Parliament in the House of Commons of Canada ran as UFA-CCF candidates in the 1935 federal election - and were all defeated largely because of their association with the unpopular UFA government and the not-unrelated popularity of William Aberhart's radical Social Credit movement. In 1936, William Irvine, a CCF founder and defeated UFA Member of Parliament, was elected the Alberta CCF's first president. In 1937, the UFA decided to leave electoral politics entirely and, in 1938, the CCF committed itself to run candidates in the next provincial and elections setting up local riding clubs for that purpose. In 1939, former UFA/CCF MLA Chester Ronning became the Alberta CCF's first leader in the 1940 provincial election but despite winning 11% of the vote the party did not win any seats in the Alberta Legislature - the CCF had not garnered the support of the UFA's conservative supporters or put a dent in support for the agrarian populism of the Social Credit Party of Alberta.