Provocation in English law

In English law, provocation was a mitigatory defence to murder which had taken many guises over generations many of which had been strongly disapproved and modified. In closing decades, in widely upheld form, it amounted to proving a reasonable total loss of control as a response to another's objectively provocative conduct sufficient to convert what would otherwise have been murder into manslaughter. It only applied to murder. It was abolished on 4 October 2010^[1] by section 56(1) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009,^[2] but thereby replaced by the superseding—and more precisely worded—loss of control defence.