The former UK Labour Party MP "passed the torch to someone younger" in May and retired.
Now the 59-year-old is back in his tough West Leeds neighbourhood, home to "every culture under the sun", immigrants, asylum seekers, too many drug addicts and under-educated young people, packed housing estates and a 1000-inmate remand prison.
He is, as he puts it, trying to help "front-load the washing machine" - supporting community organisations helping residents to help themselves.
Mr Battle is on a three-week lecture and observation tour of New Zealand and is in Dunedin as guest of the University of Otago's Centre for Theology and Public issues, and St Margaret's College.
He said this week the longer he spent in national politics, the more he came to realise that social change would happen at the local level.
"I have learnt that change does not come from the top down, it comes from the bottom up. It takes 10 years to change council policy ... and 30 years to change national policy. So where would you go to get action? Go local.
"The tensions and conflicts of the whole world are in your neighbourhood now. Instead of going down to London to sort things out, I might have to sort them out in my own neighbourhood. So I'm more passionate [now] about community action as a means of reconciling tensions and developing more human ways of living."
Isolation and loneliness was increasing among city residents, he said. Cities had lost their sense of community, and it was time to build it back.
"Natural relationships break down and you have to find imaginative ways of building them up again, or just be a bit pushy. You need to drag people out of their houses and introduce them to each other."
In his neighbourhood, that concept was working through small initiatives such as street parties and barbecues and the annual tradition of gathering residents together for street photographs, he said.
The Catholic and one-time trainee priest, now married with three adult children, said anyone connected with a place of worship had an obligation to help build community.
"In my neighbourhood we have chapels, churches, mosques, Sikh temples, a Buddhist community and a small Jewish synagogue. All the faith communities are there and we are trying to nudge them together. We are saying: `What's the point of your faith community, and if it's just about worshipping your God, it should also be about treating each other as brothers and sisters'."
• Mr Battle has several further speaking engagements while in Dunedin. They include participating with Dunedin MPs in a discussion about politics, secularism and faith (today, 4.30pm, St Margaret's College); and giving a lecture on UK politics (Tuesday, 5.15pm, Burns 2 Lecture Theatre).
