ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses Loach’s representations of this new precariat class with a view to determining the wider significance of its emergence as a social group. Ken Loach is often thought of as a chronicler of working-class culture. Susan and Stevie’s squat in Riff-Raff serves as a blatant and visible indicator of their precarity, but it also serves as a prompt for discussion about the housing situation in 1990s Britain. Larry, a character who is prone to getting on his soapbox, explains how ‘there are thousands of empty sites in the area’, and how up and down the country there are ‘millions of acres in disuse’. The tragedy at the centre of Sweet Sixteen is closely related to the central character’s struggle to find a secure home. The tendency to romanticize, and to celebrate freedom from normative values is of course closely related to this phenomenon of free time.
