The first Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) was formed in early 1938 by the merger of the Marxist League led by Harry Wicks and the Marxist Group led by C. L. R. James. In August 1938, James P. Cannon and Max Shachtman came to London in an attempt to unite all four British Trotskyist groups. The RSL, the Militant Group, and the Revolutionary Socialist Party merged to form a new Revolutionary Socialist League, but the Workers International League (WIL) refused, claiming that agreement on perspectives was insufficient and that the new group represented a dilution of democratic centralism.