Family flies in from New Zealand to pay tribute to a headmaster who was abducted by the IRA over dinner, then murdered

​Cormac McCabe and family ate at the Four Seasons Hotel on the evening of Saturday January 19 1974.

Mr McCabe, aged 42, was a captain in the Ulster Defence Regiment, so as a member of the security forces it was dangerous to cross the border due to the republican terror threat.

Perhaps he felt that no-one would recognise him that day.

Perhaps he thought that if they did recognise him they would know him to be a respected school principal.

Perhaps he thought that if the IRA became aware of his presence they would not have time to do anything about it.

Or perhaps he thought none of these things, but we will never know because Captain McCabe was indeed recognised, and by people who had no thought for his huge contributions to education (he had been principal since 1963).

He went to the toilet during the meal and never returned to the table with his wife Nora (nee Brady) and his disabled daughter Anne.

He had been abducted by the IRA, and his body turned up in a field the next morning near Clogher, with a bullet in his head.

On Saturday evening, a half century after the atrocity, Mr McCabe’s other daughter Sheila McCabe, attended a Remembrance Service at Aughnacloy College with her daughter Dr Bridie McCabe and husband Tom Birdsall.

They had travelled to Northern Ireland from New Zealand where Sheila McCabe, a barrister, has lived for more than 30 years.

Sheila was not in the Four Seasons Hotel that terrible night in 1974, she was staying overnight with a schoolfriend.

The service on Saturday also commemorated three ex pupils of Aughnacloy murdered by the IRA:

Lance Corporal Cecil McNeill, UDR, killed age 22 in February 1983;

Private Martin Blaney, UDR, killed October 1986 age 27;

Reserve Constable Cyril Willis, killed in July 1990, age 35.

The ceremony was conducted by the Canon Alan Irwin, whose father Thomas and uncle Frederick were also both murdered by the IRA.

The school hall was packed with an estimated 500 people, including politicians, pupils, past pupils, ex-service personnel and members of the loyal orders.

The former first minister of Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster, was in the audience, as was the Ulster Unionist MLA Tom Elliott, DUP MP Carla Lockhart and DUP peer Lord Morrow.

After a welcome from the chair of Aughnacloy College board of governors, Paul Bell, the band of the Royal Irish Regiment played popular pieces of music.

There was break in the music in which a video was shown of Sheila McCabe being interviewed by a member of the Irish community in New Zealand about how she ended up in that country after a scholarship, her recollections of her father (whom she described, to laughter from the audience, as ‘bossy’) and a description of the circumstances of his murder.

Canon Irwin then presided over an act of remembrance, before Jayne Bloomer, recipient of the Cormac McCabe Award 2023, read from the Bible.

The gathering sang two hymns, on either side of an address by Canon Irwin, in which he talked about the impact of terrorism, and the problem of the retrospective rehabilitation of such terror.

Ms McCabe, whose sister Anne is still alive but whose mother died before the Covid pandemic, said that a major consequence of the murder was that it deprived her disabled sibling of a caring father.

Ms McCabe said of Saturday’s service: “We all thought it was a fantastic event which was very professionally organised and presented.

“It was a fitting tribute, and a special evening.”

She was, she said, “astounded” at the effort that went into the memorial.

Ms McCabe returned to Northern Ireland once or twice a year until Covid, and her daughter Bridie, a vet, was close to her grandmother Nora.

Present on Saturday was Ian McNeill, brother of murdered Cecil, wearing his UDR medals, and their sister Hazel Jardine.

He was taught by Captain McCabe.

"On two occasions I got the best of six from him!” he laughed.

“But I deserved it.”

Mr McNeill added: "He was the best of teachers, taught us French.

"To this day I can count in French, and say some phrases.”

His sister, Ms Jardine, said of the service: “It was brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

"I found the pipes very sad.”

Another former pupil of the school, Philip Blaney, brother of slain Martin Brady, was present at the remembrance service with his 25-year-old son Lee.

Lee said: “It is nice to have events like this where you can pay your respects.”

And Fiona Willis, widow of Cyril, father to their two children, was also very pleased with the service.

Mrs Willis said that her faith had sustained her since the murder.