The Department of Culture continues to present a profile on Edgar Challenger.
Thomas Manchester, who was Mrs Challenger's first cousin, was attrated to Edgar Challenger for more than family reasons. He was imressed by Challenger's knowledge of African History, of stories that was always ready to share about the African women of Peter's and Basseterre who, in refusing to bear mulatto children for French masters, concocted a contraceptive from ochroes.
Manchester was also impressed by Challenger's enthusiasm for land reform and his advocacy of the creation of an agricultural peasantry. There may have been another attraction. Challenger's apparent disdain for materialism must have touched a kindred note in Manchester, who having himself risked his wealth and property to fight in the cause which called him, felt an admiration for the younger Edgar Challenger who seemed to care little that his family and fortune was turning to ashes. Whatever the attraction, Manchester persuaded Challenger to join the Worker's League, orchestrated his rise to vice-president, got him elected to the Legislative Council in 1937, in the first election since 1868, and then in 1939 helped to make him first president of the Trades d labour union.
Manchester was no doubt correct in his assessment of the character of Challenger, but he overlooked one important factor. Whatever may have been his other attributes; Edgar Challenger lacked the tact and charisma of Thomas Manchester, and experienced great difficulty in dealing with some of the members on the Trade Union Executive.
He could not understand their militancy he was puzzled by it and suspicious of it. He believed in the proposition that the only true reformers were those who had crossed over from the aristocracy, who delivered from temptation by their own possessions. And he harboured a measure of indifference which sometimes bordered on scorn towards some members of the Trade Union Executive. For his part, Challengers regarded the Union as the worker's bargaining body whose strength lay in their unity. At the same time he thought that as a bargaining body the union ought to act responsibly and, in view of the war which was being fought in Europe, persuaded the executive to pass a no strike resolution.
In 1943, therefore, when the union decided to rescind the n-strike resolution, Edgar Challenger took it as a personal affront and became so angry and embarrassed that he resigned, not only as president of the union but from the Library Board and from the Legislative Council. "A so ee go." | 
Culture 
