This Is England effects the audience in a number of ways. To start with, the non-diegetic music that is played through out it contributes to the audience being involved emotionally with the action going on. Possibly because a lot of the time, a composed piece of music is playing, but the audience can’t hear any if the actors speech, it is all silenced and in slow motion. Normally, this technique is used when a shocking piece of action is happening and it slows down to make the audience be held in more suspense and this is possibly why Meadows used the music with no diegetic sound such as dialogue to hold the audience in suspense and in order to watch the action carefully. Plus having music playing will create emotion in itself such as sadness or happiness.
when Lol finds out her friend has been raped a montage of silenced action and composed non-diegetic music is played on top, inevitably the audience are made to feel devastated and upset just like the characters. 
The silence in action makes the audience stop for a minute and actually believe in what is happening and forget about real life, they are sucked into the life of the characters because its simply so attention grabbing.
Furthermore, not only does it make the audience feel empathy towards the characters I think Meadows also wants us to have a more light hearted approach towards some action as well, such as when Milky and woody are riding their peds on the pavements etc which seems surprising because in modern times that is highly illegal but it is funny because even though it wasn’t really allowed back in 1986 the audience are confident in knowing woody and Milky don’t really care whether it is legal or not.
Furthermore, when everyone is watching the football England vs Argentina game, it’s happy and makes the audience think everything is good and well. Because everyone seems to be enjoying themselves the audience are forced to be reminded of the way that sort of class of people celebrate the football with pints of beer sat, crowded around the TV all with England t-shirts on acting patriotic then suddenly when England don’t score, they are swearing and shouting at the TV etc, I think Meadows wanted it to be amusing for the audience to watch and to laugh at the characters and be reminded what it is like being in the same situations.
Jemma North's AS Blog 