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File Photo:US President Barack Obama taking his Oath of Office - 2009 January 20

Just one year ago- today, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the President of the United States. Today is the first anniversary of the inauguration of President Obama. The night Obama was elected; relief was felt around the world. He inaugurated presidency not only as a new face on the same government’s body but also the victory of hope over fear. He is the most charismatic politician on earth and very famous in making speeches. Hopes were high but the things are going to get a lot harder. So what went wrong? I believe his biggest failure is not addressing the biggest issue everyone cares and hoped about- Climate Change. What do you think? Share your perspectives on Obama’s one year in the White House.

(Background: The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44^th President of the United States took place on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. The inauguration, which set a record attendance for any event held in Washington, D.C.,  marked the commencement of the four-year term of Barack Obama as President and Joseph Biden as Vice President. Based on combined attendance numbers, television viewership and Internet traffic, it was among the most observed events ever by the global audience).

By Matthew Bruce

Terrorism has come to the forefront of World Politics after 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London

Labour were never seen as an authoritarian party unlike their counter-part Tory Party who were the authoritarian party. In 1992, there was primary evidence to show Labour didn’t really take heed of Law and Order policies with a small paragraph in their General Election Manifesto, but when Blair was elected as Labour leader in 1994 and he wanted to take Labour in a new direction, which would be known as New Labour from here. And Blair wanted to make Labour different by making the party “Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime”. Here, Blair wanted a more authoritarian party so that Labour could be more electable once more and take power away from the Conservatives. Here there were a variety of ways that Labour wanted to be tough on crime. And they made many achievements and failures which will be assessed.

Prison population has risen a lot over the last 10 years since New Labour have governed. And in this, there are many reasons that this has happened. Overall, crime has fallen since Labour has governed the UK, but the problem is that violent crime has risen a lot, this includes firearms offences and knife crimes. There has also been a rise in youth crimes, and the problem here is that Judges are more obliged to send Young People to adult prisons, here Adults are also given more custodial sentences and forced to serve more mandatory sentences; this is why Political Party Policies on Law Order always include allocation of extra Prison Places.

Terrorism has come to the forefront of World Politics after 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London. Labour had introduced plans to introduce ID Cards so that security was at a higher level, but criticism came from Civil Rights Groups and other parties as Labours requirements of information for the ID Cards seemed to be a breach of civil rights. ID cards seemed to be also not even needed, even after 9/11 the US did not turn towards Identification. And EU cards are used around the EU, but they did not stop the Madrid attacks in 2004. Labour scrapped the introduction of ID cards in their Labour Conference in 2009.

The shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes did not help the Police or the government after the attacks in 2004, after they chased a wrong suspect into a subway and onto a train and laid excessive force of bullets into him killing him. Here the Metropolitan Police were slammed for this attack after the stories made by the police were falsely led and Menezes was found out to be a electrician. Here the trust in the police from the public was damaged somewhat, the 2002 Anti- Terrorism Act was set  in place to detain suspected terrorists, in 2008, Labour tried to raise the detention of a terrorist to 42 days from 28 but was blocked by the House of Lords to keep civil Liberties of UK citizens intact to an extent.

Police Powers have also grown majorly since 1997, there was a lot of handover of power to the police in the early 90’s and when Labour implemented the Freedom of Information Act 1997 and the Human Rights Act 1998, citizens felt there civil liberties were being listed and listened too. Here though Labour gave more powers to the Police, this included greater stop and search powers, action to implement curfews and the detainment of a suspected criminal’s DNA for up to six years. In this, individual’s feel that the Police are given more power than they should. CCTV is a known as a breach to Civil Liberties as a ¼ of the world’s cameras are actually UK CCTV cameras. Here campaign group Liberty believe that we live in a nanny state and is a total erosion to our civil liberties.

In this Labour’s view to been tough on crime and tough on the causes have worked to an extent as they have brought crime down overall, but there are sharp rises in Prison Population and Violent Crime. Violent Crime can almost be seen as worse than crime itself because of the dangers and the damage it can do. In this Labour has been tough on the causes but the effects have come off worse for Labour, this could signal the need for a codified constitution as Labour have eroded the civil Liberties of UK Citizens a lot since their election in 1997.