Cathal Goulding spent 12 of the 20 years between the start of the second World War and the end of the 1950s locked up for IRA activities.
But, even by the standards of quixotic old comrades in the Curragh and Wormwood Scrubbs, the work he undertook on his release must have had the appearance of not one but a succession of lost causes.
For most of the next 20 years he set about persuading republicans that there was more to life than physical force; he recruited a new generation to half-a-dozen social and political campaigns.
The results took the pessimists by surprise. Republicans did join activists of the left, liberals, nationalists, unionists and people who simply wanted to see fair play, in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.
In the Republic, members of Sinn Fein started, helped to start, or simply helped what Goulding himself described as a scatter of campaigns. The Dublin Housing Action Committee demanded that housing its citizens, not adding to the profits of speculators, should be a priority for the Republic. Some of its members joined forces with the defenders of Georgian Dublin.
Sinn Fein-sponsored committees raised questions about the ownership, control and exploitation of natural resources, specifically fisheries and mineral wealth. The campaign led to a measure of unity on the left. For a time Sinn Fein, Labour, the Communist Party and trade unions found common cause.
Members of all groups, Goulding included, backed the women's movement, now raising demands for social reform on the political ground over which the referendums of the 1980s and 1990s would be fought.
Predictably, Goulding was accused of lowering his sights from the anti-partitionist ideal (or the national question) to new and more mundane objectives. The complaints were more po-faced than his replies.
What he had done was to point republicans in an old direction - radical and non-sectarian - but with a fresh sense of the country's needs.
In a movement in which many acted as if they had reputations to live up to, Goulding had the air of a leader who was sure of himself. Why not? His background was Fenian. He had spent his youth among republicans in the working-class heart of Dublin, one of a family of seven (three sisters, Phyllis, Nuala and Maureen; three brothers, Emmet, Des and Noel, survive him; as does Patti, whom he married on his release from the Curragh).
Not only had he no need to prove himself; he refused to resort to jargon or to tone down a boisterous sense of humour. He made no bones about his socialism or the influences, home-grown or alien, which shaped it.
The changes he led were in tune with the times: the civil rights and anti-war movements in the United States, the politics of the streets in Paris and Prague, a growing recognition that ideas mattered - and knew no boundaries.
But he bargained without the ingrained sectarianism of some and the fearful reactions of others, North and South.
He was saddened by divisions among republicans in the 1970s and 1980s and more deeply disturbed by the risks of sectarian conflict which, thanks to Billy Macmillan, Jim Sullivan and Malachy McGurran, were limited, if not avoided.
He made no attempt in the 1970s to excuse the actions of people who nominally - but only nominally - acknowledged his leadership.
Cathal Goulding went on learning, talking and listening for most of his life, not necessarily in political company but with writers, artists, fellow drinkers and, of late, his great-hearted neighbours in Myshall, among whom he felt at home. He had always enjoyed the company of young people and they in turn enjoyed his humour, story-telling and humanity.
With his brothers, sisters and partner of many years, Moira Woods, the chief mourners were their children - Cathal Og Goulding and Paudge Behan, Aodhgan and Banban Goulding Woods, and Penny, Denis, Chris, Catherine, Timothy and Benjamin Woods.