Lord Healey led the British tributes to Helen Suzman last night, describing the antiapartheid campaigner who died yesterday aged 91 as “first rate”.

Mrs Suzman, for years a lone dissenting voice in South Africa’s whites-only Parliament, used her position to visit Nelson Mandela during his 18-year incarceration on Robben Island.

Intelligence from those visits was passed to supporters of the antiapartheid struggle around the world, Lord Healey recalled. “She was very committed to the cause of ending racial segregation and was effective,” the former Labour Chancellor said.

Mr Mandela wrote in his biography, The Long Walk to Freedom: “It was an odd and wonderful sight to see this courageous woman peering into our cells and strolling around our courtyard. She was the first and only woman ever to grace our cells.”

Mrs Suzman waged an often lonely and tough parliamentary battle over 36 years. Her attacks on the apartheid regime led to her being given the accolade “cricket in the thorn tree”.

Her niece, the actress Janet Suzman, said that she remembered her aunt in vivid detail. “You can’t half-remember Helly,” she said. “She made an impression wherever she went and whatever she did.

“It was her funniness, and her bravery about speaking about apartheid and antiSemitism. She used humour, and the regime wasn’t altogether used to that ploy.” Mrs Suzman added that while her aunt was deeply fond of Mr Mandela, she had no hesitation in challenging him. “She was one of the few people who would ring Nelson Mandela up and say, ‘Look, what’s going on?’ ” A Member of Parliament first for the United Party and later the liberal Progressive Party, Mrs Suzman was an irritant to successive Nationalist governments at a time when it was not fashionable.

She became generally recognised as the leading parliamentary fighter against the National Party’s apartheid policies in its heyday.

Peter Hain, the Labour MP who led a number of antiapartheid campaigns in Britain, said that Mrs Suzman kept up her calls of protest when all others had been extinguished.

“She was one of the very few voices when so many others had been silenced,” Mr Hain said. “She was a doughty champion of human rights and a thorn in the side of the apartheid Government in some of the most difficult, darkest times.

“In her visits to Nelson Mandela and his comrades on Robben Island, she also helped improve conditions in the prison.”

Despite failing health, Mrs Suzman continued to speak out against what she saw as the failings of South Africa’s postapartheid ANC administration and especially a sense of entitlement among a new generation of black politicians who she felt had failed the movement’s earlier ideals.

Janet Suzman said that her aunt felt disillusioned with President Mbeki’s policies. “I think she was deeply troubled by Mbeki’s ‘flaccidness’ in the matter of Zimbabwe and Aids,” the actress said.

Nadine Gordimer, the South African author, said: “Helen Suzman had the brains and dignity to stick to her weapons and their target. Her impeccably informed gift of debate hit the bull’s-eye of apartheid laws.”

Another niece, Caroline Suzman, said: “Her compassion was legendary . . . Wherever I went I would always meet ordinary people whose lives had been touched and who loved and revered her.”

Times Recommends

• 'Devastating' abuse found amongst Aborigines
• Los Angeles profits from Michael Jackson stimulus
• Was Jörg Haider murdered?