CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

John Sykes (politician)

British politician (born 1956)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ6259868 ↗
Source-derived summary

John David Sykes (born 24 August 1956) is a British Conservative politician.

Parliamentary career

Sykes contested Sheffield Hillsborough at the 1987 general election, being beaten into third place.

He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Scarborough from 1992 to 1997. Following boundary changes at the 1997 general election, Sykes contested the redrawn seat of Scarborough and Whitby, but lost to the Labour candidate, Lawrie Quinn, by 5,124 votes. He re-fought the seat in 2001, but was again beaten by Quinn.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “John Sykes (politician)” is british politician (born 1956). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through John, Sykes and politician, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1956, 1987, 1992, 1997—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1956-08-24. For this dossier, John, Sykes and politician is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british politician (born 1956)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6259868. VIAF identifies the subject as 164287066. The Library of Congress control number is no2009103719. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 1987, 1992 and 1997.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “John Sykes (politician)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow John Sykes (politician) primary sources, John Sykes (politician) archive and John research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “John Sykes (politician)”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “John Sykes (politician)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.