The disillusionment of Prince Charles (and others who nurse grievances)

For most of us, complaints are good and the causes can be dealt with. Grievances, though, can't really be addressed

"Doctors of my acquaintance," said my psychoanalyst friend over his espresso, "distinguish between a patient who has a complaint and one who has a grievance. Complaints can be dealt with and resolved, grievances can't."

This was useful. We had been talking about the Prince of Wales and the famous letters; letters that his friend and biographer Jonathan Dimbleby yesterday described, masterfully, as "vivid and guileless" – while reminding us, incidentally, that HRH had also sent letters to the Iron Lady on subjects unwelcome to her, such as the inner city. Even so, the colourful and innocent letters, as leaked by whoever, did indicate something of a pattern. They were, essentially, gripes against modernity. The Prince disliked political correctness, red tape, the overuse of the concept of "rights" and – above all – the way the countryside was being handled. It was here that he is supposed to have agreed with the assertion of a Cumbrian farmer who felt he was more discriminated against than a black or a gay.

As a proposition this is idiotic. Whoever heard of skinheads going out bumpkin-bashing? How many farms have been burnt down by vandals, offended by the alien sight of hay and the peculiar smell of dumplings? What is being expressed in the angry and naive letters are not a series of complaints, one feels, but a grievance. The Prince feels that something is wrong. And as my analyst friend pretended to ask: "What on earth could the Prince possibly have a grievance over?"

The problem was not, I think, that Charles wrote these intemperate and sometimes silly letters, it is that they were private. Kept confidential, they released the Prince from the obligation of defending his views and from the discomfort of hearing alternative opinions. He has not been tested, and under those circumstances his grievances could only grow.

Over a second coffee we tackled the case of Sir William Stubbs, the head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. Throughout the A-level row I found him impressive and calm. But then he accused the Secretary of State for Education of "acting improperly" in asking officials to inquire into the practical question of regrading some A-level results. Sir William said this move "pre-empted the judgement of Mike Tomlinson" (the man conducting the enquiry), thus prejudicing his conclusions.

This struck me as being an extreme reaction. Estelle Morris may be a bit of a panicker, but I couldn't see where the impropriety lay. For a fortnight, though, Sir William and the examiners had been flayed (I suspect unfairly) by newspapers and headteachers. That was bruising enough. But then Sir William had to suffer accounts of how a ministerial source had apparently described him as "dead in the water". Complaint, I think, turned to grievance. Sir William felt got at and dumped and scapegoated. If others were going to go over the top, so was he.

He may have heard the same radio interview that I did, conducted with a girl who might have been affected by an A-level mark-down. This grade change would, she claimed, "blight my life forever". In a funny sense, it could be true. This girl now has an excuse available for anything that happens to her. "It was all going fine, until my A-levels, and then..."

Damaging though it is, such a transition can be satisfying. The same theme of grievance permeated two regular columns this week. The first belonged to the deputy editor of the New Statesman, Catholic Christina Odone. Two years ago, in the wake – I think – of the Sarah Payne case, Odone blamed paedophilia on our irreligious age. More recently this has left her with the problem of explaining the scandals involving abusive priests and their negligent bosses. This week Odone ascribed this cover-up to a natural Catholic response to anti-Catholicism. There is, she wrote, "a campaign of prejudice" against Catholics. Why, she understands people are asking, did no one ever go to the police? "Because the notion of being second-class citizens under threat is so ingrained... that handing over a paedophile to an outside court of justice is as difficult as it would be for a Palestinian to hand over a suspected terrorist to the Israeli authorities."

The interesting thing about this analogy is that it doesn't work at any level. The offences were committed against Catholics, not "outsiders", and Catholics, no doubt, use the "outside" courts just as Jews, Protestants and Zoroastrians do. But what Odone does here is mobilise a sense of grievance. The problem is not the consequence of a hierarchical, authoritarian institution that claims semi-divine qualities and never admits mistakes. No, it is a response to prejudice. She externalises fault.

Meanwhile The Spectator carried a column by journalist/socialite Petronella Wyatt, which described how she was lightly mugged and forcibly deprived of some expensive clip-on ear-rings. Shaken but unharmed, Ms Wyatt made her way to the rozzers and filed her complaint. The streets of London were no longer safe, don't let your daughters walk down the street etc etc. The duty officer, one speculates, may have wondered why people will walk alone on dark city streets wearing expensive jewellry, when any tourist guide to Rome or Reykjavik would advise them against it.

What shocked Ms Wyatt, however, was that in the copshop, "the walls had more posters about the dangers of speeding and drink-driving than about mugging". But yet again, this comparison is self-evidently absurd. Petronella may have in mind a new poster campaign aimed at would be muggers, exhorting them not to carry knives when they go out robbing. I doubt it, just as I doubt whether she considered that drink-driving and speeding kill lots of people, while mugging (though nasty) doesn't.

The South Kensington event that Ms Wyatt was emerging from, on her way to her encounter with two drunks and destiny, was – I believe – the party thrown by the Telegraph editor Charles Moore on the eve of the Countryside demo. This enormous and brilliantly organised event was a fusion classic. It linked a real but unpopular complaint (about banning fox-hunting) to an overarching semi-incoherent grievance arising from the envelopment of the rural middle classes in the same process of change already endured by most of their urban and suburban compatriots.

The closing village shop is the perfect expression of this, since – logically – the marchers appeared to be telling Mr Blair to tell them to shop locally. So, as modernity, loss of control, loss of privilege and family break-up hit the countryside, the posters found a scapegoat. "I lost my farm because of Blair," said one, improbably. "Blair is vermin," said many others.

For most of us complaints are good, and the causes can be dealt with, or at least the consequences can be calibrated and then a decision made. The result is some degree of empowerment. Grievances, though, are bad, especially when they are nursed with determination. They cannot really be addressed, and the result is disillusion.

David.Aaronovitch@btinternet.com