Editing Willem Drees (section)

=== Local politics ===
Drees became a member of the executive committee of the SDAP's [[The Hague]] branch in 1910, and the following year, at the age of 25, he was elected as the branch's chairman, a position he would keep until 1931. He was first elected to the [[Municipal council (Netherlands)|municipal council]] of The Hague in 1913, and would keep his seat until 1941. In 1919, Drees became the city's second social democratic [[alderman]], alongside [[Willem Albarda]]. He was responsible for [[social affairs]] until 1931, and for finance and public works after that. In this period, Drees supported the broad coalition that governed the municipality, and was a proponent of a pragmatic, reformist course for the party; he had not supported Troelstra in his call for revolution in the [[Red Week (Netherlands)|Red Week]] in 1918.<ref name=Tromp/> For 22 years, between 1919 and 1941, Drees also held a seat in the [[Provincial Council of South Holland]].

Drees was asked to succeed [[Willem Vliegen]] as the SDAP's national chairman in 1926 and he reluctantly accepted, but after the party's secretary and several local branches protested his nomination at the party congress of that year due to Drees' limited national fame, he withdrew his nomination. The following year, however, he became a member of the national SDAP executive, where he would remain until the party's dissolution in 1946.<ref name="Biography Willem Drees">{{in lang|nl}} [http://www.iisg.nl/bwsa/bios/drees.html Biography Willem Drees] ''BWSA''</ref><ref name="Van der Steen"/>