The success of the September demonstration encouraged the Committee to move from symbolic sit-down demonstrations in London to mass direct action at the places where nuclear weapons would be deployed, and they planned simultaneous demonstrations on 9 December to walk on to air force bases at Wethersfield, Ruislip, Brize Norton, Cardiff to sit on the runways and to prevent planes from taking off, and street sit-downs in Bristol, Manchester and York. By this time the authorities had begun to take the Committee of 100 more seriously. The official response had escalated from prosecution for incitement to breach of the peace to prosecution for the much more serious offences of conspiracy and incitement to breach the Official Secrets Act. Six organisers, the "Wethersfield Six", were charged with these offences and five later imprisoned for eighteen months: Ian Dixon, Terry Chandler, Trevor Hatton, Michael Randle, Pat Pottle; and the sixth, Helen Allegranza, to twelve months. (Picture) Bertrand Russell said that he was equally responsible, but the authorities ignored him and concentrated on the six young, unknown Committee of 100 officers. 3,000 military and civilian police were mobilised at Wethersfield. 5,000 demonstrated there and 850 were arrested. The Wethersfield demonstration was regarded by many as a failure and it was the Committee's last act of large-scale civil disobedience. There were recriminations within the Committee, one internal memorandum saying that its policies had turned it into "a public spectacle, a group isolated from the general body of public opinion and feeling." Herbert Read resigned from the Committee, saying that the action was "strategically foolish". The Committee was weakened by the imprisonment of its officers.