Mark Langhammer

Mark Langhammer is a trade unionist, employed as Director of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers and elected onto the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in 2008, being re-elected in 2010. A former politician in Northern Ireland, and previously a prominent northern-based member of the Irish Labour Party.

Initially a community activist in North Belfast's Rathcoole housing estate, Langhammer first became involved in politics in the 1980s, joining the Campaign for Labour Representation, which aimed to persuade the British Labour Party to organise in Northern Ireland. In 1989, he stood in the European Parliament election as a "Labour Representation" candidate, polling 3,540 votes.

Langhammer was elected to Newtownabbey Borough Council as a Newtownabbey Labour candidate for Macedon electoral area in 1993. The Campaign for Labour Representation disbanded, having accepted that the British Labour Party had no intention of organising in Northern Ireland, and Langhammer instead began lobbying the Irish Labour Party to do so.

Langhammer was initially recognised as the leader of the Labour coalition, formed in 1996 to contest elections to the Northern Ireland Forum. He headed the group's list in the Belfast North constituency, but this took only 571 votes, and he was not elected. He also took third position on the Coalition's regional list, but only the first two candidates were successful. Amid turmoil in the Coalition, Langhammer refused to take part in the talks which led to the Good Friday Agreement, holding that the set-up for them was "institutionalised sectarianism".

Langhammer held his council seat in 1997 and 2001 before standing down in 2005. In 2002, he was injured in a pipe bomb attack, which police attributed to loyalist paramilitaries.

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