LABOUR RELATIONS IN A SUGAR FACTORY 1 7 historical function of the governments of the new nation states of the third world to guarantee them a suitable political and economic environment in which to flourish—cheap labour, large markets, vast profits, no strikes or left-wing revolutions. While, in the final analysis, it may be true that the continuing supremacy of western capitalism has been the dominant feature of mid-twentieth century European decolonization, it would be rash to assume that the transition from colonialism to self-government was a smooth one for European businessmen and industrialists in a country like India. On the contrary, the transitional period was characterized by a series of minor crises. The European companies at times found it hard to adjust to the new regime's labour and industrial policies, or found difficulty in persuading the incoming Congress ministers to espouse their interests during industrial disputes. For their part, the Congress ministers, even if they did not subscribe to the socialist objectives sketched by the resolutions of the 1931 Congress session at Karachi and advocated by the party's left wing, at least felt some obligation to improve the conditions and negotiating position of the industrial workers. Congressmen in office often found themselves torn between the workers, many of whom had voted for (or in other ways identified themselves with) the Congress and who often had the partial support of local party organization, and the industrialists; whose property the ministers felt bound to safeguard, if necessary by resort to the police, prohibitory orders and the courts, from attacks by ^aggressive' strikers. That the European companies generally emerged triumphant from these industrial trials of strength was often indicative of their skill in exploiting the ambiguities and conflicting ambitions of the Congress ministers, in playing upon their fear of revolution from the left, and in urging them to uphold the bias towards property and ^law and order' which had been such a pronounced feature of the British regime in India. Ministerial support for European industrialists was neither automatic nor inevitable; but in the end the pull of capital was greater than the appeal of labour. This account of industrial conflict at the Ncllikuppam sugar factory in South Arcot from 1937 to 1939 tries to show how a European-controlled enterprise—in this case the giant Parry's organization and its subsidiary. East India Distilleries and Sugar Factories—was able to coax the first Congress ministry to hold office in the Madras Presidency largely to take its side during a dispute with the factory's workers. Although the strike at Nellikuppam in April and May 1939 occurred several years before Indian independence and at a time when the powers of the provincial ministries were still restricted by the 1935 Government of India Act.the Nellikuppam story shows how a foreign-controlled company and an Indian government could come to see mutual interests in working together to control a section of India's industrial labour force.