Thirty-five years after he first hit the streets, Eamonn McCann is back, standing in the relentless rain in Derry, preaching revolution.
He has never really gone away. There have been numerous causes - the minimum wage, the anti-war movement, legalised abortion.
But this is his first foray into electoral politics since those heady civil rights' days when he railed against the old Stormont government. He isn't too keen on the most recent version either, set up under the Belfast Agreement. He wants to bring "a radical opposition" to the Assembly, become a northern Joe Higgins, "confronting the bosses and the State".
He is standing for the Socialist Environmental Alliance, an umbrella organisation of radical groups. "Standards of living here have risen in the past three decades but there is still massive inequality," he says.
"The top quarter of earners have 56 per cent of income. The bottom quarter have 6 per cent. A lot of people are excluded. They feel betrayed as the political process is applauded by respectable society, nationally and internationally."
He is angry that the authorities promote the North as a low-wage economy: "The big companies come here for cheap labour and stay until they find a location workers can be paid even less." Housing problems remain. "I've just met a man we helped squat in 1968 when Catholics couldn't get homes. He is living in a damp house with cracks in the wall and the main sewerage pipe blocked.
"I'm not saying as an Assembly member I'd make a significant difference to anybody's life. But, without sounding pompous, I'd be their voice." He loves Derry with a passion and accuses planners of putting commercial interests before beauty.
"They're ruining the Foyle. It's a much more magnificent river than the Liffey or Lagan - mere riverlets. Yet we have no walkways, theatres, or restaurants along its bank. They're keeping it to move in big business."
The British government massages the statistics but unemployment is high in Derry. "When a department store opened, 6,000 people applied for 250 jobs. That says it all." McCann "doesn't have a clue" how his campaign is going. Supporters expect a respectable vote but no seat.
He canvasses in the Fountain - a loyalist enclave - as well as the Bogside. He has secured support from ex-IRA prisoners and Protestant trade unionists.
There has been a minor victory against conservatism already. McCann's partner of 20 years, Goretti Horgan, was excluded from accompanying him to the count. The law referred only to "wives and husbands". After complaining of discrimination, he forced a U-turn.
Aged 60, he still wears the familiar dress of his civil rights' days - leather jacket, T-shirt and jeans. "I don't own a suit and if I appeared in one now, I'd be a laughing-stock." Did he expect, 35 years after first entering the political battlefield, to be still on the go? "Absolutely not. I thought the whole thing would be over in a few years and we would have a just society. But I'm not depressed. It's always good to be out on the streets. I've never been more optimistic."