In Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP) is a left social democratic political party which campaigns for Scottish independence. The SNP has controlled Scotland's devolved legislature since the 2007 election as a minority government, and were a majority government from the 2011 election and have been a minority government, since the 2016 election. Its current leader, Nicola Sturgeon, is the First Minister of Scotland. Early years (1934–1960) The party was founded on 7 April 1934 as the result of a merger between the National Party of Scotland (NPS) and the Scottish Party. Sir Alexander MacEwen became the new party's first leader. The merger was the brainchild of leading NPS figure John MacCormick, who desired unity for the nationalist movement in Scotland, and, upon learning of the Scottish Party's emergence, moved to secure it. Initially, the SNP did not support all-out independence for Scotland, but rather the establishment of a devolved Scottish Assembly within the United Kingdom. This became the party's initial position on the constitutional status of Scotland as a result of a compromise between the NPS, who did support independence, and the Scottish Party, who were devolutionists. John MacCormick wanted a merger between the two parties and knew that it would only be through the support of devolution rather than independence that the Scottish Party would be persuaded to merge. However, the SNP quickly reverted to the NPS stance of supporting full independence for Scotland. Professor Douglas Young was the leader of the Scottish National Party from 1942 to 1945. Young fought for the Scottish people to refuse conscription and his activities were popularly vilified as undermining the British war effort against the Nazis. Young was imprisoned for refusing to be conscripted. John MacCormick left the party in 1942, owing to his failure to change the party's policy from supporting all out independence to Home Rule at that year's SNP conference in Glasgow. McCormick went on to form the Scottish Covenant Association, a non-partisan political organisation campaigning for the establishment of a devolved Scottish Assembly. This Covenant in itself proved politically challenging for the SNP, as it stole their nationalist platform. It also deprived the party of many members, who left with MacCormick. The Covenant managed to get over 2 million signatures to a petition demanding Home Rule for Scotland in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and secured support from across the parties, but it eventually faded as