Whats this movie where a kid has a drunk father and their family lives next to a dump?

I don't remember, I watched it long ago. The British kid hangs out with these boys n they spy on these girls changing. Then when the boy grows up he gets a job as a factory worker, then a postman. He meets a girl who takes him on her house, they have sex, but she has some disease that makes her die. Later, the boy becomes an alcoholic and slaps his mother