FOR AN 83ft high granite outcrop 289 miles west of the Scottish mainland, Rockall has had a more turbulent recent history than one would expect of a lonely island lying storm-swept on the Atlantic frontier.

First annexed by the Crown in 1955 by a landing party from a survey ship, the move was made at the height of the cold War because of fears that the Soviets might want to track experimental missiles fired out into the Atlantic Ocean from the rocket range on Benbecula.

In 1972, the Rockall Act incorporated the island into the UK as an outlying part of the County of Inverness-shire.

In 1985, former SAS commando Tom McClean lived for six weeks on the island to claim it for Britain.

For 48 days, up until yesterday, it was occupied by Greenpeace activists who proclaimed the rock as a new sovereign state, Waveland, in a protest against bids to exploit the Atlantic frontier for oil.

The campaigners would send back regular bulletins describing life on Waveland inside a solar survival capsule. At one point, Western Isles council planners said the campaigners would have to apply for planning permission to live there, and also threatened to charge them Council tax based on their capsule dwelling - probably at Band A the least expensive category.

Ironically, the Foreign Office appears to have signed away Britain's rights to the 60,000 square miles of the Atlantic Ocean around Rockall because the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which it will ratify on August 24, forbids uninhabited rocks without an economy being used as a basis for territorial claims.

Britain has delayed ratifying the treaty since it came into force in 1994 - although a signatory, up till now it has not agreed to accede to it, ie be bound by its terms.

Foreign Secretary Robin Cook yesterday justified his decision, announced last week in a written Commons Answer, by saying that UNCLOS would give Britain:

• the right to impose and enforce strong anti-pollution measures in a 200-mile pollution zone around our shore

• important freedoms of navigation and overflight rights essential to the effective operation of our navy and air force as well as merchant shipping and civil aviation;

• a new and helpful continental shelf regime including rights to explore and exploit natural resources to the edge of our continental margin

• and an internationally recognised framework for deep seabed mining to cover any future demand for deep-sea minerals.

However, according to at least one international law expert, Dr Iain Scobbie of of Glasgow University, the Government could quite easily have signed the Treaty without having to cede the territorial rights around Rockall, such is the legal confusion over the interpretation of Article 121 which outlaws territorial claims based on uninhabited rocks.

Dr Scobbie, senior lecturer in International Law, said yesterday that there was no real consensus among academic writers of what Article 121 meant.

The human habitation element did not require past evidence of habitation, just the potential for it, and as such, the Greenpeace encampment might well provide sufficient evidence.

A dispute between Norway and Denmark over territorial rights around Jan Meyen Island in the Arctic Ocean - a similar outcrop to Rockall used by the Danish Government as a scientific research station which had all its supplies flown in - went to the International Court of Justice which found in Denmark's favour.

China, which has also ratified UNCLOS, is in dispute with Vietnam over the uninhabited Stratly Islands in the South China Seas with future mineral and oil development in mind.

"China is making an economic claim to the Spratly Islands - like Rockall, but some are even smaller and are often submerged by high tides - and no state has said that the Spratly Islands are incapable of generating economic activity," said Dr Scobbie.

"Given the fluidity of the Convention, Rockall could have been argued about in law. The British Govermnent seems to be surrendering its rights before the argument has really started. The Government could have signed up and just kept quiet because of the ambiguities and because of contrary state practice," he said.

The Government is under particular fire, however, from Britain's fishermen, angry that "this most important change to Britain's fisheries limits since the 1970s has been done with absolutely no consultation with the fishing industry".

In short, the ceding of its territorial rights around Rockall means that Britain's westernmost claims for exclusive economic activity, ie fishing, will henceforth be made from St Kilda, which is 100 miles off Harris, and is owned by the National Trust for Scotland and is permanently inhabited by a few soldiers on a missile tracking station.

Rockall itself remains part of the UK because it is within 200 miles of St Kilda, and as such retains territorial fishing rights within 12 miles of Rockall.

A SPOKESWOMAN for Lord Sewel, Scottish Fisheries Minister, explained yesterday that after redrawing, the new fisheries limits would continue to include Rookall itself and the fishing grounds on the Rockall Bank, there would be no change in the entitlements to fish under the terms of the Common Fisheries Policy, quotas would remain the same, and Britain retained the right to fish those quotas in the 95% of waters relinquished, which will now become international or Irish waters.

Barrie Deas, chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisation said that current fishing practice and rights - for white fish mainly haddock in the Rockall Bank area - were unlikely to be prejudiced.

The Government's decision however, might well put its fishermen at a disadvantage in the future when they may want to develop the deep water fisheries which are currently more popular with Spanish and French fishermen, rather than Britain fishermen who tend to have smaller boats and therefore find it harder to fish so far out to sea in rough weather.

A number of vessels have been built in the last couple of years, particularly in Scotland, to prosecute these fisheries - that would be affected," said Mr Deas.

He also warned that if the newly redrawn territorial limits cut through the Rockall Bank area, Britain and its European Union partners would be competing with High Seas fleets such as Iceland which could in turn create conservation problems.

Dr John Gordon, senior research officer at the Scottish Association for Marine Science at Dunstaffnage, said it was probably only a "matter of time" before British fishermen start to exploit the deep sea resources of blue ling, round-nose grenadier, orange rought, and black scabbard which are relatively common in the Continent.

Both the Governmet and UK Offshore Operators Association are adamant that accession to UNCLOS will have absolutely no effect on Britain's oil exploration rights.

The economic exploitation of the seabed under the water is covered by separate Continental Shelf regulations which are determined by a formula based on geomorphology.

The UK is currently negotiating oil exploration licensing rights with Iceland and Denmark (through its owner-ship of the Faroe Islands) of the blocks west of Rockall although more than 20 oil companies have been testing for oil in the Atlantic Frontier - but these negotiations are not affected by UNCLOS or Britain's ceding of territorial rights around Rockall.

Greenpeace, meanwhile, has moved off Rockall, claiming a "partial victory" in its campaign and also suggesting that by ratifying UNCLOS, the UK may be forced to curb its ambitions to industrailise the Atlantic. At this stage, such predictions appear to be groundless, however.