She studied art, design, French and German at the Regent Street Polytechnic, but was a voracious learner outside formal education, aided by an incredible memory.
[3] Hacker became a pacifist and socialist in her teens, having seen wounded soldiers returning from World War I, and hunger marchers from Wales and the Midlands in Oxford Street.
Writing of her trip in the Camden New Journal, Hacker said: 'of course we didn't know what he (Stalin) was doing then' seemingly indicating that, like many people on the left at that time, she did not believe the atrocity stories circulating about the regime.
The phrase 'we did not know' in regard to Stalin's terror has to be set alongside the fact that, also in 1931, a conference against 'slavery in Russia' took place at London's Royal Albert Hall.
[6] After years of serving on voluntary and local government organisations, Hacker was elected to the Greater London Council as Labour Party member for St Pancras.
She wanted her great-grandchildren to know that right up to the end she had fought to leave a better world for them than the one she felt politicians and financial interests were creating.When the editor of her local North London newspaper, the Camden New Journal heard her speak on nuclear disarmament, he offered her a fortnightly column in the paper.