He moved to Northern Ireland in 1975, living just off the Shankill Road, where he worked in a youth club.
[3] In 1984, he attracted attention when he broke into a civil defence bunker and obtained papers which appeared to indicate Soviet military targets in the Republic of Ireland.
[4] Emerson stood unsuccessfully as an independent in Area E of Belfast City Council at the 1977 Northern Ireland local elections.
For the Northern Ireland Forum election in 1996, he not only stood in Belfast North, but also took second place on the party's top-up list.
This inspired him to devote time to promoting consensus-based methods of voting, and during the 2010s he was the director of the de Borda Institute, www.deborda.org