Powell had voted against the Schuman Declaration in 1950 and had supported entry only because he believed that the Common Market was simply a means to secure free trade. In March 1969, he opposed the UK's joining the European Economic Community. Opposition to entry had hitherto been confined largely to the Labour Party but now, he said, it was clear to him that the sovereignty of Parliament was in question, as was UK's very survival as a nation. This nationalist analysis attracted millions of middle-class Conservatives and others, and as much as anything else it made Powell the implacable enemy of Heath, a fervent pro-European; but there was already enmity between the two.