Robert Martin Hilliard (7 April 1904 – 22 February 1937) was an Olympic boxer, Irish republican, Church of Ireland minister and communist.

[2] There he became interested in republican politics, co-founding the College's Thomas Davis Society and participating in the latter stages of the Irish Civil War.

[2] He was ordained a Church of Ireland priest in 1932, and worked in the mission to the poor attached to St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast.

[2] Hilliard's socialist beliefs overcame his religious calling; he abandoned his family and ministry and went to London, where he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and returned to journalism.

[2] A comrade-in-arms recalled that he ostentatiously parodied the sign of the cross by reciting "In the name of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Stakhanov, Dimitrov, the Party Line" while tracing the hammer and sickle with his hand.