What happened to the Civic Forum - a forgotten failure of the Good Friday Agreement which folded in 2002 and never returned

While the agreement is known internationally for bringing peace to Northern Ireland, it is less well known that certain provisions and promises have either fallen by the wayside or never came into being in the first place.

And while progress towards a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights has been intermittent over the last two decades, other parts of the agreement have been left in the doldrums.

The Civic Forum, written into existence by a few lines in the historic agreement, is today one of those forgotten failures of the Good Friday Agreement architecture.

But former members say that it was never destined to fail, with lessons too for politics in 2023.

Those involved at the time recall it as a body that did have potential, with one recalling his hope, amid the optimism following the agreement, that the forum could act like “citizens’ parliament”.

What happened instead was that, even while sub-committees were established and public meetings held, the forum never took on the pivotal role some members imagined.

When Stormont collapsed in 2002, the forum folded too. When politicians returned to powersharing in 2007, it was never resurrected.

Former member Brian Dougherty says that he never even received a letter telling him that the forum had stopped.

As far as he is concerned, formally at least, “it has never actually been dissolved”.

Mr Dougherty, a community worker then who now runs the New Gate Arts and Culture Centre in Londonderry, was among those who did think the forum could do some good.

“Initially, I thought it was certainly a worthwhile venture,” he told the PA news agency.

“In hindsight, it never really had or was given a chance to work.”

He compares it with the much smaller Northern Ireland Policing Board, another body of which he was a member.

“It was always cumbersome and unwieldy,” he said.

The Civic Forum had met for the first time at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall in 2000, with the gathering in October hailed by First Minister David Trimble and Deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon.

The chairman, Dr Chris Gibson, an experienced business figure in his early 60s, said at the time the body could “tackle even the most complex subjects”, telling members he was looking forward to creating “the difference which will make this a society second to none to live in, invest in, to visit, or even to hear about and aspire to”.

To members, a lack of political backing and limited resources helped ensure that, after about 12 plenary meetings over a two-year period from October 2000, it would never get a chance to live up to that rhetoric.

Mr Dougherty summarises the problem as “far too many people, not enough resources”.

“There wasn’t even money for a cup of tea or book a room anywhere.”

“None of the political parties really bought into the process,” he said.

Other former members have similar recollections.

Sharon Haughey-Grimley, who went on to become lord mayor of Armagh City and District, was a student when she was appointed a forum member by Mr Mallon.

The youngest member of the forum, she already had a profile in the region after then US president Bill Clinton read out the letter she had sent him as a 14-year-old as he visited Northern Ireland in 1995.

Like others, she was excited at the prospect of the forum.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think the forum really ever got an opportunity to properly get going.

“We were very much given a blank sheet, so whenever we started the forum it was, the forum ourselves, had to develop our terms of reference and a lot of time was given to that.

“We didn’t have the full support of the Northern Ireland Assembly, in particular the unionist parties weren’t greatly supportive of the forum.”

But she points to achievements, saying the forum was ahead of politicians at Stormont when it came to tackling issues like the Irish language.

“I know one of the early issues that had to deal with, within the forum, for our own body, was the issue of language and how we address the Irish language and Ulster Scots as a matter of policy for the forum.

“When you look back on it now, we were doing that two decades before it was ever dealt with by the Assembly.”

As the politicians mark the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, powersharing remains suspended, with little indication that the DUP will return to Stormont soon.

To some, it is an idea that could be beneficial amid recurring bouts of political deadlock.

“Initially, it was more of a concept than a fully-formed idea. The concept was for Northern Ireland to be able to address some of the really hard issues you would have to go beyond party politics,” says Ulster University’s Professor Duncan Morrow.

“In some ways, that concept has proven accurate, that if there isn’t some kind of way in which you can address some of the more complicated issues in a wider forum, political parties effectively end up at loggerheads.”

Prof Morrow is clear that the forum had design problems and could have been better thought through.

“Nobody is really saying we should go back to the Civic Forum that existed immediately after the Agreement, because it wasn’t seen to have worked.

“But we would need to put a lot of effort into redesigning what it looked like and you might be able to draw more now on ideas of participative democracy.”

Alan McBride, a victims campaigner, is among those former members with some regrets about the forum.

But he also looks back with pride on the efforts to hold public meetings, as well as some of the sub-committee work on issues like poverty and life-long learning.

At times, he said, it was even a little “boring”.

But he is clear: “We should never lose the vision of it.”