ABSTRACT
The community mediation movement in the UK is at a stage where it is expanding extensively with many new services, and intensively with new levels of national and regional structures.17 It would be foolish for any movement to ignore important questions of institutional survival; if mediation is important, organisations are needed to push it forward both locally and nationally. However, most community mediation services are charities providing a free service to their communities, and any funding follows expressed need rather than organisational expansion for the sake of it. Moreover, the mediation movement in the UK is still sufficiently small and diverse that it can be decentralised and democratic, with policy and publications developed by working groups composed of ordinary members, who are working mediators and trainers. These people still mostly see themselves as activists, and their influence maintains the value base of the movement.
