Her father, Arthur Ellis Franklin, was a merchant banker and her uncles Herbert and Stuart Samuel were leading politicians.

She organised nursery schools, formed arts and crafts centres, and became honorary secretary of the Palestine Council of Jewish Women.

[1] She had mixed feelings about later developments in the region: I think of the thousands of Arabs, many of them friends of old, now leading wasted lives on the refugee camps on the other side of Jerusalem.

And despite my deep admiration for the achievements of Israel, I feel infinitely sad as I remember the Jerusalem where I once lived and the hopes that I had then for a peaceful and united Palestine.

Soon after her arrival, Helen joined the Labour Party and ran for Parliament at a by-election in Dulwich (1932) and in Harrow in the 1935 general election, but lost both times.