Father has to try to spoil social gathering (5)
I believe the answer is:
party
'social gathering' is the definition.
(I know that party is a type of social gathering)
'father has to try to spoil' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'father' could be 'pa' (pa can mean dad or father) and 'pa' is found in the answer.
an anagram of 'try' is 'rty' which is within the answer.
No letters remain.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for party that I've seen before include "Political organisation" , "Crew" , "Bash" , "Social occasion - political group" , "Celebratory social gathering" .)