Ulster unionism thumb|Ulster Volunteers, Belfast, 1914|200x200pxIn 1898 Connolly had cited "the Protestant workmen of Belfast, so often out on strike against their Protestant employers, and the role their Protestant ancestors had played a 100 years previously in the rebellion against the British Crown, as a demonstration of what "precious little bearing" the question of religious faith has in the struggle for freedom. Later, when in Belfast for the Socialist Party and the ITGWU, he identified "religious bigotry" as the one obstacle remaining to the acceptance of Irish self-government and thus to the achievement of socialist unity on a separate all-Ireland basis. But he understood this as a political force arising, not from confessional differences, but from the deliberate recall and accentuation of ancient native-planter divisions.
Ulster unionism thumb|Ulster Volunteers, Belfast, 1914|200x200pxIn 1898 Connolly had cited "the Protestant workmen of Belfast, so often out on strike against their Protestant employers and the role their Protestant ancestors had played a 100 years previously in the rebellion against the British Crown, as a demonstration of what "precious little bearing" the question of religious faith has in the struggle for freedom. Later, when in Belfast for the Socialist Party and the ITGWU, he identified "religious bigotry" as the one obstacle remaining to the acceptance of Irish self-government and thus to the achievement of socialist unity on a separate all-Ireland basis. But he understood this as a political force arising, not from confessional differences but from the deliberate recall and accentuation of ancient native-planter divisions.