Papers of Harry Mister relating to the Danilo Dolci Trust

Correspondence with activists and organisations, notes, printed ephemera, circulars, press cuttings, issues of journals and magazines.

Danilo Dolci (1924-1997), the social activist often known as the "Sicilian Gandhi", visited the village of Trappeto in Sicily in 1952 as a young architect. Shocked by the poverty, corruption and violence he saw, he devoted his life to action to help the Sicilians. Dolci adopted nonviolent Gandhian methods, as seen in the 1956 "upside-down" or "reverse" strike in which workless men repaired a road, resulting in his imprisonment. The Danilo Dolci Trust was established in 1966 to raise funds to support Dolci's work and was registered as a charity the following year. Harry Mister was invited to join the Trustees in October 1966. He brought a range of experience and knowledge, as a peace activist, business manager of Peace News and co-founder and manager of Housman's bookshop. Harry Mister resigned as a Trustee in July 1976 as he felt "the time has come to make a vacancy for someone able to play a more useful role".

Original order of the file has been retained.

Available to researchers, by appointment. Access to archive material is subject to preservation requirements and must also conform to the restrictions of the Data Protection Act and any other appropriate legislation. There are currently no such restrictions on this archive.

Donated by Harry Mister to Commonweal between 1976 and 2004.

This description is 'interim'; it is published as part of our 'First Sort' programme which aims to put basic information about new archives into the public domain as quickly as possible. We will refine and enrich it in response to user demand.

Water damage around edges of documents.

Described by Alison Cullingford, May 2015.

Copies may be supplied or produced at the discretion of Special Collections staff, subject to copyright law and the condition of the originals. Applications for permission to make published use of any material should be directed to the Special Collections Librarian in the first instance. The Library will assist where possible with identifying copyright owners, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user of the material.

Duplicates and irrelevant material have been weeded as seen; further appraisal will be carried out as the Archive is catalogued in more detail.

No further accruals are expected.

Many of the Commonweal Archives at the University of Bradford are linked to this archive, notably Peace News (Cwl PN) and Eric Baker (Cwl EB). Papers relating to Dolci or the Trust are held at several repositories including Swarthmore College (reference collection DG 105) and the London School of Economics (National Peace Council/11/27).