DESPITE its name, La Scala Theatre in Prince’s Street, Dublin, tended to be used mostly for silent films, ballroom dancing and boxing.

On May 16th 1926, it even hosted the launch of a new political party, Fianna Fáil [Warriors of Ireland]. 

Leading players: Constance Markievicz and Éamon de Valera. Audience: 500 enthusiastic Republicans.

And as the party spread across West Cork, Ireland’s future president and (three times) prime minister was helped by a lesser-known figure: Tommy Mullins.

Fianna Fáil’s mythical figurehead was fair-haired giant Fionn mac Cumhaill, who built the Giant’s Causeway.

Aided by his mighty spear and magic thumb, he led his forces to splendid victories against evil, and never died – he just lay slumbering until needed again.

Those now joining his resurrected army were expected to show the same standards of personal honour as the members of his first legendary Fianna.

Born in 1903, member Thomas Lincoln Mullins was brought up in New Rochelle, New York state, where Thomas Paine, father of the American Revolution, once lived.

An only child, he was given his middle name because he shared his birthday (12 February) with President Abraham Lincoln, who’d helped abolish slavery in the USA.

Just before the First World War, when Tommy was 11, he moved with his Irish parents to Kinsale, where he was educated at the Presentation Brothers School and joined Markievicz’s Fianna Éireann, transferring to the Irish Volunteers at 16.

While celebrating American Independence Day on July 4th 1920, Tommy and his father were captured by British forces in Kinsale, and charged with belonging to an organisation at war with England, possessing seditious literature and weapons. 

Both were sentenced to six months’ hard labour in Cork, then bundled onto a destroyer, chained, and shipped with other prisoners to Pembroke, Wales.

From there, they were transferred to London: his father to Wandsworth Prison, and Tommy to Wormwood Scrubs.

Here he went on hunger strike and was force-fed. The 17-year-old then spent time in Belfast, Ballykinler and Spike Island, where he was ordered to whitewash every building in the compound, before his release after the 1921 Truce.

While in Belfast, on service for the IRA’s 3rd Cork Brigade, he was captured again and imprisoned in Mountjoy, where he took part in a 41-day hunger strike in October 1923, during which three prisoners died.
In summer 1926, Tommy set out by bicycle to kindle interest in Fianna Fáil throughout West Cork.

On July 17th, The Southern Star, which he wrote for, reported that during a recent meeting in Skibbereen 35 names had been enrolled and a branch formed, its objective being ‘to break the connection with England, the never-ending source of all our political evils…’

A second meeting, drawing a ‘large attendance’, was held in Bantry Cinema on July 23rd. The following month at Clonakilty Town Hall, Tommy was heartily cheered when he announced that, like the American revolutionaries, no Irish person should pay taxes without being represented in parliament. 

Next stop Bandon, where 300 people listened to his descriptions of full emigrant ships, and thousands of unemployed walking the streets. ‘Ireland was bleeding rapidly to death’, and ‘the root of the matter lay in foreign domination’, he argued. 

The 1921 Treaty was a ‘fraud’ and a ‘sham’, because allegiance still had to be sworn to the British king, and Britsh soldiers were still present in the six counties partitioned from the rest of the country.

By September 1926, Tommy was planning a tour of West Cork for de Valera. Driving in a borrowed Baby Austin car, with ‘Dev’ – as he always called his lifelong friend – at the wheel, they covered the whole constituency, from Kinsale to Castletownbere. 

Between 4-11 October they spoke at 12 venues in town halls and squares, sometimes in persistent rain, clocking up around 1,500 miles. Since Fianna Fáil aimed to restore the native language, each meeting would open in Irish. Some 45 more branches were formed during the trip, which cost a total of £10.

According to reports, a particularly rousing reception greeted them in Dunmanway. The following month, Tommy earned the distinction of proposing the very first resolution at Fianna Fáil’s inaugural conference: the party’s primary aim should be ‘the achievement of one Ireland, and that free’.

From then, the man from Kinsale rose to great things within the party: in June 1827 he was elected TD for West Cork, and subsequently became Public Relations officer, General Secretary (1945-73) and Vice-President. With the help of his wife, Bridie, he’d frequently work until 2 am, but he never thought of it as work: ‘It was my life.’

On Fianna Fáil’s Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1976, messages of congratulation flooded in from branches all over West Cork, and from local businesses: a vintner’s in Drimoleague, a hairdresser’s in Ballineen, and a builder’s in Dunmanway, where Tommy returned to speak.

Tommy Lincoln Mullins died in a Dublin nursing home in 1978, aged 75. At his funeral, Taoiseach Jack Lynch said he had ‘devoted his all to his beloved country in its fight for freedom… no man or woman contributed more to its emergence…’

Doubtless Tommy would be chuffed if he knew that Britain has got in early to celebrate the party’s centenary, and stunned to hear that in March 2025 its Royal Mail issued a postage stamp featuring Fianna Fáil’s very own hero, Fionn mac Cumhaill himself!