However, on 23 February 1974, with the election only five days away, Powell dramatically turned his back on his party, giving as the reasons that it had taken the United Kingdom into the EEC without having a mandate to do so, and that it had abandoned other manifesto commitments, so that he could no longer support it at the election. The monetarist economist Milton Friedman sent Powell a letter praising him as principled. Powell had arranged for his friend Andrew Alexander to talk to Joe Haines, the press secretary of the Labour leader Harold Wilson, about the timing of Powell's speeches against Heath. Powell had been talking to Wilson irregularly since June 1973 during chance meetings in the gentlemen's lavatories of the "aye" lobby in the House of Commons. Wilson and Haines had ensured that Powell would dominate the newspapers of the Sunday and Monday before election day by having no Labour frontbencher give a major speech on 23 February, the day of Powell's speech. Powell gave this speech at the Mecca Dance Hall in the Bull Ring, Birmingham, to an audience of 1,500, with some press reports estimating that 7,000 more had to be turned away. Powell said the issue of British membership of the EEC was one where "if there be a conflict between the call of country and that of party, the call of country must come first":